A family reunites following a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.Credit:AP
"[I] turned out the lights and had the kids go to the back of the room,"he said.
Students,all tied to their mobile phones,uploaded footage and photos to social media and texted their parents as the gunman rampaged through the school.
"Our f--ing school is getting shot up,"one student posted on Snapchat along with a video of students huddling under desks and screaming as more than 40 shots were fired outside.
Authorities said the alleged shooter arrived at his old school at about 2.50pm wearing a gas mask,a red t-shirt,trousers and black combat boots.
Students are evacuated by police from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School.Credit:AP
He used smoke bombs to deliberately set off the fire alarm to bring students out of their classrooms,Florida senator Bill Nelson said.
Cruz,who was expelled for disciplinary reasons,carried multiple magazines and at least one AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle,Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said.
He started shooting outside school grounds before moving up to the third floor of a building he would have known well.
"He was on the third floor,he knows the school layout. He knows where everyone would be at. He’s been in fire drills,he’s prepared for this stuff,"former schoolmate Matthew Walker,17,told local TV station WJXT-TV.
Anxious family members gather south of campus following the shooting.Credit:AP
Further confusing authorities,he concealed himself in the crowd and was among those running out of the school,the Broward Country Sherriff's office said.
After looking through security footage,they quickly identified him and a police officer spotted him in a nearby suburb.
Matthew said many students were not surprised to hear that Cruz was the suspect as the troubled teen often spoke about the guns he owned and how he would use them.
"A lot of kids threw jokes around like that,saying that he’s the one to shoot up the school,"he said.
Gard,the maths teacher,told theMiami Herald that Cruz had threatened students last year and was told he could no longer come onto campus with a backpack due to the threat he posed.
On two now-deleted Instagram profiles under Cruz's name,he posted dozens of photos of himself in balaclavas holding knives and guns.
He called himself"the annihilator"and posted an image of a bullet-riddled piece of paper with the caption:"Group therapy".
Giovonni Watford,17,told BuzzFeed that he was in a junior army reserves program with Cruz and found him to be"off".
“He was super stressed out all the time and talked about guns a lot and tried to hide his face.”
Cruz told Watford's older brother that he was tired of being picked on.
Senator Marco Rubio said it appeared Cruz had designed and executed the shooting"to maximise loss of life".
The location,the victims,the suspect might seem different. But the horror and heartache was all too familiar in the US.
“Let me just note once again for my colleagues,"Democrat senator Chris Murphy said in the US Senate on Wednesday night.
"This happens nowhere else other than the United States of America. This epidemic of mass slaughter. This scourge of school shooting after school shooting. It only happens here,not because of coincidence,not because of bad luck,but as a consequence of our inaction."