The 17-year-old younger brother of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz (pictured) has been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. Photo / Getty
The 17-year-old younger brother of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz (pictured) has been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. Photo / Getty
The younger brother of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz has been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility, according to reports.
Zachary, who turns 18 next week, was removed from his Lantana home on Friday, days after his brother gunned down 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, sources close to the investigation confirmed to the Palm Beach Post.
He was taken to a mental health facility for treatment under the Baker Act, which allows an individual to be temporarily detained for mental health evaluation either on a voluntary or involuntary basis, reports Daily Mail.
The Act allows minors to be held for up to 12 hours, but whether Zachary has been released remains unclear.
The Cruz brothers moved into family-friend Rocxanne Deschamps' mobile home in Lantana around Thanksgiving, after their adoptive mother Lynda Cruz died of pneumonia on November 1.
But Nikolas decided to move to northern Broward County with James and Kimberly Snead and their 17-year-old son after Deschamps told him he couldn't have his gun inside her house.
"Violence and gun not accepted in my house," she wrote in a now-deleted Facebook comment.
Zachary, however, had stayed at Deschamps' home, according to the Sneads' lawyer Jim Lewis.
Nikolas was still living at the Sneads' home when he went on a murderous rampage on Wednesday at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 and injuring 15.
The Sneads allowed the shooter to keep the gun in their home, as long as it was kept in a locked cabinet to which he had the key, Lewis said.
Nikolas Cruz moved in with James and Kimberly Snead (pictured) and their 17-year-old son after he left Deschamps' home. Photo / Facebook
Whether that gun is the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle he used to kill 17 people remains unclear.
"We are going through a lot," James Snead said outside his Parkland home Friday. "We are hurting right now."
Lewis said the family was devastated and shocked by Nikolas' actions.
"They had no idea that this kid was capable of this," he told the Palm Beach Post. "They were just trying to give him a place to live, and now the world has gone crazy."
The Sneads have all but gone into hiding since the attack, and Kimberly, who came out in tears, just asked to be left alone.
"I have no comment," she told The New York Post outside her home Friday morning.
"Please respect my family and my privacy now."
During the three months Cruz lived with the Sneads, he was respectful and quiet but also sad over his mother's death, Lewis said.
"No indication that anything severe like this was wrong," Lewis told AP. "Just a mildly troubled kid who'd lost his mom. He totally kept this from everybody.
"The mother said if they had any suspicion that he was violent, was capable of anything like this, he would have never stepped foot in her house."
Cruz was supposed to go to GED classes on the morning of the shooting, but when his friend's father woke him up to drop him off on his way to work, the teen said something to the effect of: "It's Valentine's Day. I don't go to school on Valentine's Day," according to the lawyer.
"They just blew it off," Lewis said. "This is some 19-year-old that didn't want to get up and go to school that day, and (they) left it at that."
Despite the family saying they saw no indication, the troubled teen had already begun showing what may have been warning signs he was bent on violence.
The 19-year-old got expelled last year from the high school for undisclosed disciplinary reasons.
As investigators tried to establish the motive for Wednesday's shooting rampage, students and neighbors portrayed Cruz as an often strange and hostile figure who threatened others, talked about killing animals, and posed with guns in disturbing photos on social media.
Benjamin Bennight, a Mississippi bail bondsman, was concerned enough after seeing the "professional school shooter" comment on his Youtube channel that he took a screenshot of it on his phone and called the FBI.
Two FBI agents visited Bennight the next day, but authorities said they never spoke to the Florida teen.
"No other information was included in the comment which would indicate a particular time, location or the true identity of the person who posted the comment," said Brett Carr, a spokesman for the FBI office in Jackson, Mississippi.
"The FBI conducted database reviews and other checks but was unable to further identify the person who posted the comment."
