Nikolas Cruz’s Lifetime of Trouble: Family Loss, Flashes of Rage
Mr. Lewis said Mr. Cruz had said something to the effect of: “I don’t go to school on Valentine’s Day.”
Howard Finkelstein, the chief public defender in Broward County, said in an interview
that Mr. Cruz’s legal team had not yet decided whether to mount an insanity defense.
But Michael Goldfarb, whose 17-year-old son Bradley knew Mr. Cruz, said his son had told him Mr. Cruz was expelled for having a knife at school.
Helen Pasciolla said Lynda Cruz had called sheriff’s deputies to the house numerous times in an effort to keep Mr. Cruz in line.
The family of another schoolmate, the Snead family, took in Mr. Cruz because his friend felt badly
that Mr. Cruz was now alone in the world, said Jim Lewis, a lawyer for the family.
One time, I sent him home because he was misbehaving at our house and he took a golf club and smashed one of my trailers.”
He said that Mr. Cruz at one point had gone to a school for students with special needs.
Mr. Cruz and his brother, Zachary, had been adopted,
and were raised largely by their mother, Lynda Cruz, especially after their father, Roger P. Cruz, died suddenly in 2004 at the age of 67.