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IRE Podcast: The Shooter

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: February 14, 2018. It was a Wednesday and a relatively calm one in the Sun Sentinel newsroom in South Eastern Florida. City Hall reporter, Brittany Wallman was chatting with the managing editor at her desk about new technologies in journalism. But their conversation was cut short when they heard someone in the newsroom say, “Oh my gosh Stoneman Douglas is on CNN and the headline said something about a shooting”.

: We want to bring you up to date on a still active and developing situation. I am sorry to have to report here that we’re talking about a high school. Shots have been fired. This is Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School if you know it, this is Parkland Florida.

: We have no information on whether there are any victims. We know we’ve seen one person coming out on a stretcher.

: The beginnings of what would become known as the Parkland mass shooting were unfolding before the newsroom’s eyes. Before the day was done, 17 people would be dead and 17 more would be wounded. And one of the deadliest school shootings in modern American history. On this week’s episode Sun Sentinel reporters Brittany Wallman and Megan O’Matz walk us through how they investigated the shooter, Nikolas Cruz in the chaotic hours after he walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas with a semi-automatic rifle in tow. Their reporting pieced together a profile of Cruz as a lost and lonely killer.

: What we’ve discovered through a whole lot of records and interviews was that Nikolas Cruz had a very troubled life starting very early on and that he had many many many interventions from people in a position to have done something over the years. There were a lot of red flags and a whole lot of when you look at it now, eerie exclamations from him that he wanted to kill people.

: I am Tessa Weinberg and you’re listening to the IRE Radio Podcast. As the number of victims from the shooting continue to grow Sun Sentinel reporters mobilized and began to look for answers.

: So much was happening all at once. That first day we didn’t know how serious it was of course how many were dead. You know who the shooter was. All those things were just, you know mysteries that were coming together very fast. On that first day or so, there’s a lot of confusion a lot of chaos. Even the authorities don’t even know what’s right. They’re trying to understand what happened as well.

: That’s Megan O’Matz an investigative reporter at the Sun Sentinel who worked with Brittany and a team of reporters to dig into Cruz’s background. Megan had been driving back from an assignment when she heard news of the shooting. Her home was closer than the office. So she headed there to start making calls. Back in the newsroom, Brittany’s first thought was about her own teenage daughter who attends a different public school.

: En ik wist gewoon hoe versteend ze moesten zijn, zelfs van 20 jaar journalist te zijn, niet verdoofd voor zoiets groots.

: There was no mass email to the newsroom saying, “All hands on deck”. After covering numerous hurricanes and an airport shooting the year before Sun Sentinel journalists knew how to respond to breaking news. They looked for ways in and started reporting. Brittany’s first step was to see what was unfolding on social media.

: I was on Twitter because I’m a big Twitter fan and I’m always on Twitter. And that really in this story was a great tool for not just finding out information but finding videos or actually first-person accounts, it was really amazing because students were on there.

: Brittany stuurde opmerkelijke tweets rond in de redactiekamer en hield in de gaten wat andere bronnen meldden. In een breaking news situatie van deze omvang. wilde Brittany weten wat andere journalisten vonden.

: This was something where not just everybody in our newsroom was converged, but every single major news organization in the country was covering this in a breaking news story. Different reporters are finding different things. So if we saw a source and witness that some other outlet had come across somebody had to make note of that name, is this somebody we want to come back to or here’s a record we want to get.

: To find sources who might know Cruz personally. Brittany turned to Facebook. Lynda Cruz, Nikolas’ mother had died in 2017, but her Facebook page was still active. So Brittany started there and began to send friend requests to Linda’s friends.

: Everybody that uses Facebook knows that if you’re not friends with the person and you send a message they’re not going to see it. But you do see when somebody tries to friend you. So I started trying to friend people.

: Terwijl Brittany de sociale media afstruinde, begonnen andere verslaggevers naar gegevens te zoeken.

: To me, there’s sort of a triage, an order of operations when you’re covering something big. You’ve got to first get your records request in because those are going to take awhile. And there are a lot of public records in this case. There’s probate stuff and there were some school records. There were sheriff’s office records. 911 calls, and transcripts and just all manner of records.

: Cruz was als kind verhuisd. Dus een van de eerste dingen die verslaggevers wilden weten waren de adressen van alle plaatsen waar hij had gewoond.

: That was key so that we could then request any police incidents at those addresses. And he had lived in addresses that were covered by different law enforcement agencies, so that’s different requests that had to be made.

: Die verzoeken vroegtijdig indienen was een enorme hulp.

: I would say some of the most interesting records and 911 calls were from the sheriff’s offices just asking for all activity at these addresses over the years. And that was how you see that everything from when he was little and he threw a rock at someone to going to buy a gun when he was older.

: While those documents told reporters more about Cruz’s home life. There were still holes in the story. But they found that many of the records that would tell them more weren’t public.

: You’re dealing with confidential student records. You’re dealing with mental health records. You’re dealing with a child, for most of his life. So a lot of these things are not open records. We’re dealing with an active criminal investigation and a nationally high profile case that the whole country in the world is watching. So officials are clamping down. People are scared to be quoted.

: The reporter’s next option. Asking sources to leak them records for example, Cruz had changed schools over the years, and the reporters wanted to see what school disciplinary records might tell them. But those were confidential.

: Zijn schooldossier was ingewikkeld, want toen hij schoot was hij al 19, dus hij had een volledig schoolverleden.

: We moesten gewoon samenkomen en vragen of we een leraar kennen die bereid is om zijn disciplinaire gegevens te lekken. En wat voor soort leraar zou een motivatie hebben om dat te doen? Moeten we proberen zo'n soort leraar te vinden? En zo probeerden we echt een strategie op te stellen om ons te helpen.

: Om bronnen te laten lekken was overtuigingskracht en empathie nodig.

: Ze willen je dingen vertellen, maar sommige mensen zijn terughoudend om je gegevens te krijgen of zijn bang dat hun vingerafdrukken erop zullen staan als ze het systeem ingaan en ze voor je tevoorschijn halen. Dus dat zijn gewoon uitdagingen waar we dagelijks mee te maken hebben om mensen op hun gemak te stellen om ons te helpen.

: Basically, we said we’re trying to tell the story and help people understand what went wrong and how this could have been prevented and what is wrong with the system. And you know we want the truth to come out. A lot of people if you appeal to the idea of the truth and getting to the truth, most people are agreeable to that.

: Overal waar ze keken vonden ze angstige ouders, familieleden, overheidsfunctionarissen.

: So there was so much outrage in so many different elements of the story that people wanted to get that out there. And I think in something like this you’re weighing that you’re going to get in trouble for releasing a record. I mean are you really going to get penalized because you released a record of somebody that shot 34 people and 17 of them died?

: And in some ways, the fact that the shooting happened in the Sun Sentinel’s backyard gave them an advantage. They had well established relationships with sources in the community and they knew they could trust them.

: We’re in this community. We covered this. We know our sources. We know who’s reliable. And so when people were giving us information it wasn’t that we doubted that the documents that we were getting were not correct. And that’s because we have such deep ties here. I think if I were parachuting into another community where I didn’t know who I was dealing with, I would have more concern about the authenticity of documents. But in this case, we knew precisely who we were dealing with.

: As information rolled in it became essential that reporters stay organized. They traced Cruz’s life using a timeline. In a situation like this with so many moving parts, they needed more than one.

: We hebben verschillende tijdlijnen voor hem. Een tijdlijn van zijn interacties met de politie, een andere tijdlijn van zijn schoolgebeurtenissen, een andere algemene tijdlijn van zijn leven betreffende wanneer hij geboren is en wanneer zijn vader overleden is en wanneer ze naar een bepaalde plaats verhuisden en wanneer ze hun huis kochten. Ik bedoel tijdlijnen zijn echt nuttig in deze. Zo kun je een patroon van een leven veel gemakkelijker zien als je data opschrijft en wat er gebeurd is.

: Ze noteerden elk detail dat ze leerden en zetten het in chronologische volgorde.

: En zo beseften we dat hij drie dagen nadat hij van Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was getrapt, het wapen kocht waarmee hij zowel leerlingen als leraren doodde.

: Megan wist uit een arrestatierapport dat Cruz in februari 2017 het wapen had gekocht dat hij bij de schietpartij gebruikte. En ze wist ook uit schooldossiers dat hij diezelfde maand van school was gestuurd.

: Dus ik wilde nagaan hoeveel dagen er zaten tussen de schorsing en het kopen van het wapen. En die staan in aparte dossiers. Je moet weten dat een, die informatie bestaat en proberen te weten dat ze in elkaar passen.

: En omdat een andere Sun Sentinel verslaggever de advocaat van de wapenwinkel waar Cruz het wapen had gekocht had geïnterviewd, konden ze de exacte datum waarop hij het had gekocht achterhalen. Een feit dat in elk openbaar dossier stond.

: So indeed it turned out that he had bought the gun three days after being expelled. I mean he didn’t use it for another year. But just the fact that he had bought it within three days was, I think very interesting and telling and we use that in the profile.

: And that to me was just a profound fact. And so it was a lot of collaboration with other reporters and going across the room and saying, “Hey, do you know this and do you know that,” which we continued to do because we’ll be the ones that will keep the story alive.

: Bit by bit the records and interviews, reporters were able to stitch together a snapshot of Nikolas Cruz. He had been adopted at birth and raised in a loving family. An anecdote from a source helped the reporters better understand his childhood. A tipster had told Brittany that if she went to a local park she would see how devoted Cruz’s mother, Lynda, had been to the community and to her sons. The source said Cruz and his adopted brother’s names can be found at the park because Lynda had helped build it.

: We sent a reporter out to the park. She looked all over the place and she found the boys’ names. They were on fence slats, and there was a fence slat that said Nikolas J Cruz on it and the one next to it said Zachary Cruz. We took a picture. And of course, as soon as the city saw that in the story, they went and took those fence slats out. But it was just such a cool detail to have in there that really was very telling about what kind of mom Lynda Cruz was.

: Maar Lynda zou Cruz, bij wie op 3-jarige leeftijd een ontwikkelingsachterstand was geconstateerd, alleen moeten opvoeden.

: Een groot deel van zijn leven was zijn moeder een alleenstaande ouder. Zijn vader stierf. Hij had ook een adoptiebroer die ook emotionele problemen had. Dus dit was een vrouw die omging met zeer uitdagende jongens. Dat kon je zien in het politierapport dat ze regelmatig belde.

: Cruz was gediagnosticeerd met emotionele en gedragsstoornissen. En Megan maakte een lange lijst, en noteerde elke keer dat er een werd genoemd.

: Sommige stonden in schooldossiers. Sommige stonden in dingen die moeder aan de politie zou vertellen als ze kwamen. Dus ik kwam met een lijst van ADHD, emotionele gedragsstoornis, moeder zei obsessieve compulsieve stoornis, woede problemen. Dus dit was duidelijk een kind met veel problemen.

: Naarmate Cruz ouder werd, werden zijn problemen groter. Hij veroorzaakte problemen op school en in de achtste klas stapte hij over naar een school met een programma voor emotioneel en gedragsmatig gehandicapte kinderen. Een rapport van het schoolsysteem dat naar de reporters leidde, liet zien hoe hij de controle begon te verliezen.

: It was before he went to Stoneman Douglas. It was sort of evaluating whether he was ready to go to a “normal” school and it talked about it, he checks on his grades a lot. I mean he was very interested in his academics and getting good grades. And then it would just say like, “Oh, but he has poor judgment. A peer told him to jump off the back of a bus and he did. And he is very interested in terrorists and guns and killing. And then the next sentence would be, “Nikolas doesn’t always raise his hand in class.” And reading that it was just so stunning.

: School officials took note of Cruz’s concerning behavior. So did state agencies and the FBI. Someone close to the family had tipped off the FBI that they were concerned Nikolas Cruz might become a school shooter based on posts on social media accounts. And before that a blogger had alerted the FBI that a user named Nikolas Cruz had commented on his YouTube page writing, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”

: It showed that there were failures at every single level. And it was so strange in this case where you might as well have been walking around with a billboard on that said, “I want to shoot up a school,” because he essentially said those things the police had numerous numerous encounters with him. I mean there were just for so many things.

: Cruz’s difficulties in school were only compounded by his mother’s death in November 2017, just a few months before the shooting. Cruz was devastated and lost, sources told the reporters. And the brothers went to live with a former neighbor. It didn’t last long. Cruz got into a fight with the neighbor and her son and he was kicked out. In a transcript of a 911 call, Cruz can be heard describing the fight to a dispatcher.

: En je verbleef gewoon in dit huis en je werd kwaad en je sloeg dingen en toen kwamen ze achter je aan.

: Ja.

: Goed.

: The thing is I lost my mother a couple of years ago. So I’m dealing with a bunch of things right now.

: Ik begrijp het.

: Zijn stem begon te kraken en je hoort een beetje emotie in deze jongeman die zijn moeder heeft verloren.

: These were just some of the moments reporters unearthed about Cruz’s troubled life. As reporters learn more and more about the teen they tried their best to accurately represent who he was.

: People have histories and things and events that shaped them. And it’s up to us to try to explain that fully so that others can understand it. So we don’t know the true motive for this shooting if we’ll ever know one. I mean he’s just a really seriously disturbed individual. But these all point to stresses on him. So we are just trying to portray the major events in his life and a little bit more about his background and what he was suffering from and dealing with throughout his life.

: Brittany putte uit haar eigen levenservaringen toen ze nadacht over hoe ze over Cruz moest schrijven.

: My dad was a prison warden and I lived my whole younger life around people that had committed crimes basically. And I know are human beings and it’s not a black and white deal and everybody has a story to tell and that Nikolas had a sad life. I mean it was sad. The truth is the truth. And it’s important for people to understand what leads to something like this and especially in this case we don’t really have a motive per se. We don’t know that he targeted specific people. We don’t know why he chose that day a year after he bought the gun. And so to understand the only place you can go is his history and his childhood.

: And when Megan went to one of Cruz’s first court appearances after the shooting, it struck her that no one from his family had appeared in court for him.

: Hier was een soort profiel van deze verloren en eenzame persoon en toen hij uiteindelijk naar de rechtbank ging voor zijn eerste verschijning was er niemand in de rechtszaal voor hem.

: One thing that really rang out was how alone he was multiple people had used the descriptions of lost and lonely in describing him which really struck me. And people that commented on the story some people did criticize it for being too sympathetic to him which is what I figured would happen. But I think it’s important to be fair even to a mass murderer.

: Not long after the shooting national media outlets packed their cameras and headed out to cover the next breaking story. So it’s up to the local reporters to report on the aftermath the shooting is having on their community.

: Nothing that we’ve ever covered here has had such an impact on the community and just saturated the entire community with sadness. The first two weeks I could have cried at any moment. I probably still could just thinking about all of the different losses. And some of the videos that we saw that we didn’t use that were just horrible seeing what these children went through. It hasn’t been the same. Everywhere you go, everyone’s talking about it.

: Reporters have pitched in to cover the shootings aftermath while still maintaining their regular beats. They’ve seen the effects of the shooting spill into other areas as the debates ensue about school safety gun laws and active shooter drills. For even the Sun Sentinel’s most experienced reporters, the Parkland shooting has been unlike anything they have ever seen before.

: This is not a typical story. This is not the kind of story that I’ve experienced in the past. It is of an intense nature that is keeping on day after day with many many new elements. And I don’t know when it will be “over”. We are all heartbroken by what happened. We can’t not be affected by the idea of all these children dying in their classrooms and it tears you up.

: It’s the small gestures of support that have made the relentless reporting a bit easier. Journalists across the country have sent the Sun Sentinel candy and stuffed animals. They’ve paid for bar tabs and offered reassuring words.

: Op dit moment hebben we in de redactiekamer therapiehonden, omdat journalisten therapie nodig hebben. Maar sommige van de therapiehonden die naar Marjory Stoneman Douglas gingen om de kinderen zich beter te laten voelen, zijn vandaag hier in de redactiekamer.

: Outside of the newsroom, the reporters have tried to take the occasional day off for mental health, but it’s been hard. Things at home began to slip, whether it’s the laundry, groceries or the kid’s daycare. Megan had just started a kitchen renovation when the shooting happened.

: You just kind of come home at the end of the day and you collapse. And for me I’m sweeping up sawdust and just hoping I can eventually get my kids in together again. But you know you do put it into perspective because that’s a minor thing versus what all these families are dealing with who lost loved ones and there are many many many professionals in our community whether they’re school officials or police that are also doing their jobs in a way that is very intense and long long hours. And it’s not just the media.

: The community has noticed the paper’s dedication. The Sun Sentinel has unearthed new information in the case and dedicated teams of journalists to cover the aftermath.

: Mensen bedankten ons zo veel. We kregen zoveel positieve feedback van de gemeenschap die ons bedankte voor de 100 procent aandacht en zoveel aandacht. En dus hebben we er zeker goed aan gedaan.

: In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the school district put out a statement asking the media not to reach out to the victims’ families.

: This is such a great illustration of why that is an offensive and ridiculous request asking the media please don’t invade the space of victims’ families because of what happened here. They had something to say and it became an entire movement.

: Van landelijke marsen tot nieuwe wapenwetten in Florida, de verslaggevers weten dat dit nog maar het begin is. Een van de belangrijkste aspecten van de verslaggeving is het teruggaan naar bronnen die eerder aarzelden en het nauwgezet bijhouden van verzoeken om verslagen. Georganiseerd blijven is belangrijk volgens Megan. Ze zei dat ze graag kopieën en back-ups van dossiers maakt, of dat nu op flashdrives is, ze e-mailt ze naar een andere privé-server of ze print ze uit.

: And all of that may not look very flashy or may not be evident initially, but it really really helps as you’re putting these stories together. Is to gather every record you can know where it is, keep track of it keep track of your record request and be able to identify pieces that will fit together down the line. Because again, this story is going to go on for months and months and months.

: The reporters may not know when things will go back to normal in Parkland Florida if they ever will, but they do know this. They’ll be around for however long it takes.

: Het is een uithoudingsvermogen. Je weet dat je erop terug moet komen. En je moet genoeg mentale energie hebben om in het verhaal te blijven graven nadat iedereen naar andere verhalen is gegaan. Ik denk dat we het aan de gemeenschap verschuldigd zijn om niet op te geven.

: Thanks for listening. Take a look at our episode notes for links to the Sun Sentinel’s investigation, as well as resources for reporting on guns trauma and breaking news. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or Google Play or wherever else you get your podcast. And you can spend hours listening to the stories behind some of the best investigative reporting in the country. At IRE.org/podcast. The IRE Radio Podcast is recorded in the studios of KBIA. Blake Nelson draws our art for each episode. Sarah Hutchins is our editor. From Columbia Missouri, I am Tessa Weinberg.

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