In this episode, I speak with a man who reported a disturbing comment made by Nikolas Cruz to the FBI in September of 2018. He talks about the process of reporting the comment, how the FBI responded, and what he learned about the Florida shooter.
00:00:07.000So, Ben, I understand that you have a YouTube channel, and about six months ago or so, you posted a video and you received an alarming comment on your YouTube channel from the Florida shooter, Nicholas Cruz.
00:00:49.000They came out and saw me the very next day, or the next morning after I reported it.
00:00:57.000And then I didn't hear anything else about it until, well, yesterday when after the school shooting happened, they contacted me and came out and met with me again and asked me if I had any further information.
00:04:02.000So, it could have it could be possible that maybe he was, you know, he's been planning this attack for a while now, and maybe he was looking up, you know, legal consequences or bonds or, you know, looking up bond services because a lot of people said that he was a troubled teen.
00:04:17.000So, you know, that could have been what piqued his interest in your video.
00:04:22.000Given the fact that you reported this six months ago, and you know, as we as we saw yesterday, this individual who not only was reported by you to the FBI, but was also, you know, reported by, you know, his classmates and teachers to school officials.
00:04:42.000He was known as problematic, wasn't shy about posting his behavior and his weapons and his sick desires to kill innocent animals on his social media.
00:04:54.000How did it make you feel when you found out who the shooter was?
00:04:59.000You know, I only learned who the shooter was when the FBI came to my house yesterday.
00:05:08.000As far as all the other stuff you just said, I've been so busy with media and interviews today, I haven't actually been able to catch up on the news stories.
00:05:20.000So I'm not aware of the things that you just talked about.
00:05:25.000So not only the thing that people find to be extremely alarming is that not only did you report this comment to the FBI in September, so many months ago, but apparently, according to other students who knew him, they used to joke about how this guy would someday shoot up the school, or if there was a school shooter, it would be him because he was a loner and gave off this weird, depressive vibe.
00:05:50.000He posted pictures of dead animals he shot and killed on his social media.
00:05:56.000His Instagram page had pictures of him with guns and knives.
00:06:01.000And one student said that the shooter would often joke about how he knew the floor plan of the school.
00:06:08.000So people are just kind of shocked that the FBI essentially knew, you know, months before this attack happened that this individual was threatening to do exactly what he did.
00:06:20.000And it didn't, you know, they weren't able to stop him or they didn't really make any effort to stop him.
00:06:30.000Like I said, this is the real, I have heard some of the reporters talk about he had posted some things on different social media sites, but up until right this moment, I haven't been aware of any of that.
00:07:34.000I don't know if the second guy was the same guy or not.
00:07:38.000You know, very polite, very professional.
00:07:41.000And he asked me a lot of similar questions as he did the first time.
00:07:48.000And he asked if there had been any further contact, if, you know, I knew anything else, if I'd found anything else out about the original comment.
00:07:58.000And unfortunately, there was nothing more I could tell them or give them.
00:08:04.000And of course, they didn't share their information, their investigation information with me, or they didn't tell me what they had done with the previous information or anything like that.
00:08:20.000How does that make you feel as a citizen reporting an incident or reporting an alarming comment to the FBI and knowing that they clearly didn't really take a lot of action to investigate this guy before he carried out this horrible shooting?
00:08:39.000How does it make you feel knowing that you can report a threat and a tragedy can still occur?
00:08:47.000You know, a lot of the media that I have talked to today has asked similar questions.
00:08:54.000And I feel like that people are trying to get me to kind of side with the F to side with that point of view.
00:09:07.000But, you know, the information that I had, the information that I gave them was very minimal.
00:09:52.000It's interesting that, you know, that's your viewpoint of the situation because a lot of the discussion now that people found out about your story this morning is how is it that the FBI, right, an intelligence agency, wasn't able to identify this individual when he was posting these comments.
00:10:10.000So a lot of people are very intrigued by this situation.
00:10:30.000I said a lot of people are just very intrigued by the situation because they can't fathom how something like this, like the exact scenario which this individual carried out was reported and it was still not prevented.
00:10:47.000So people are just trying to wrap their heads around how the FBI, which, you know, we know our intelligence agencies as being able to find out anything, right?
00:10:55.000Being able to find information out about people that we think is hidden and they still weren't able to.
00:11:04.000And given the political climate and some of the recent FBI, you know, the bad press, I guess you could say, that the FBI has been receiving, some people are wondering, you know, whether the FBI is really competent because this is a recurring theme.
00:11:25.000If you look at a lot of the worst attacks that have happened in this country in the past few months or the past year, the FBI seems to have had foreknowledge of the individuals or they said, oh, this individual was reported to us in the past, or, oh, this person was on one of our terror watch lists.
00:11:41.000So this situation isn't the first time in which a shooter or a killer or terrorist in the United States has been identified by the FBI prior to an attack taking place.
00:11:54.000And you know, just to kind of tone myself down a little bit, as you can imagine, today has been kind of a stressful day.
00:12:04.000And I do understand from the average citizen's point of view that, you know, people feel like more could have been done, but I don't know.
00:12:16.000I just don't know the FBI's processes.
00:12:19.000I don't know, you know, I feel like they investigated it, you know, and they didn't come up with anything, but I don't know how they investigated it.
00:12:31.000I don't know what they did or didn't do.
00:12:34.000And it's, I guess that's why you hear a little bit of frustration in my voice is because I just don't know.
00:12:40.000You know, all I know is I had a piece of information.
00:13:41.000Well, do you have anything that you would like to, you know, tell other individuals who may receive threatening comments on their social media from people commenting?
00:13:54.000Do you have any advice for anybody who may encounter similar situations in the future?