*According to reports, as officers ran around like crazy looking for the man who killed 17 people and injured 14 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida on Valentines Day, the shooter was shopping at Walmart and McDonald’s.
Nikolas Jacob Cruz had taken an Uber to the school, and managed to evade officers for more than an hour before he was captured and confessed everything, according to law enforcement officials and court documents.
The 19-year-old had been a student at the school before he was expelled last year for disciplinary reasons. He is currently being held without bond on 17 counts of first-degree premeditated murder in the attack at Douglas High in Parkland.
A booking affidavit filed Thursday by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office read, “Cruz stated that he was the gunman who entered the school campus armed with a AR-15 and began shooting students that he saw in the hallways and on the school grounds. Cruz stated that he brought additional loaded magazines to the school campus and kept them hidden in a back pack until he got on campus to begin his assault.”
Deputies tracked down the Uber driver, who said she dropped Cruz off at 2:19 p.m. ET, toward the end of the school day, according to the booking affidavit.
Sheriff Scott Israel told reporters at a news conference Thursday afternoon that the driver didn’t know what her passenger was planning and was completely blameless.
A student actually described Cruz to arriving officers. But by that time, the shooter had left to go to Walmart, and is said to have stopped at a Subway to buy a drink prior to heading to McDonald’s; where he hung out for a while before leaving on foot.
Forty minutes later Coconut Creek police would spot and detain Cruz in the nearby community of Coral Springs at about 3:40 p.m., according to the timeline Israel gave.
