Parkland shooting suspect told police voices in his head told him: ‘Burn. Kill. Destroy.’
As Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students prepare to head back to class, a newly released interview with police details the gunman’s reasons for killing 17 people in the Parkland Fla., school, the Washington Post reports.
Nikolas Cruz, 19, confessed to the mass killing and injuring 17 others, saying that “demons” in his head directed him to complete the vicious act. He said the voices got worse after his mom died, months before the Parkland massacre.
In the revealing interview, the accused gunman said the voiced also ordered him to “Burn. Kill. Destroy.”
“Personally, I think you’re using the demon as an excuse,” Detective John Curcio of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said at one point, according to the transcript. “You could have stopped the demon any time you want. You didn’t want to stop the demon.”
The details of the 217-page transcript revealed that Cruz had an unhealthy penchant for shooting animals and an obsession with violence and guns.
Cruz admitted that he tried to kill himself before the attack because of his “loneliness”. He also said he used drugs Xanax and marijuana, during the 12-hour interview. During the interview he talks to himself at times and he also requested the services of a psychologist.
When Curcio asked during the interview, if he wanted water, Cruz responded:
“I don’t deserve it.”
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Cruz who was arrested alive, and given something to eat by police, asks during the interview after Curcio left the interrogation room:
“Why didn’t he kill me? Why didn’t he kill me? Why didn’t he kill me?”
Zachary Cruz, his brother was also brought into the interview. He said to Cruz:
“people think you’re a monster” and asked, “Why did you do this?”
Cruz’s response was: “I’m sorry, dude.”
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Howard Finkelstein, the Broward County public defender representing Cruz has tried to garner sympathy for the killer saying:
“This statement is just more proof of how severely damaged and broken a human being he is,” he wrote in an email Monday.
“He is the most damaged and broken human being I have encountered in 40 years of doing this type of work. Everybody knew it.”
An edited video of the interview will be released this week.
