US school shooter Nikolas Cruz stopped at McDonald’s after mass killing

OHMYGOSSIP – The US teenager accused of using a semi-automatic rifle to kill 17 people at a Florida high school has confessed. Nikolas Cruz carried out the massacre on Thursday (NZ time), then headed to a Wal-Mart and bought a drink at a Subway restaurant before walking to a McDonald’s, Stuff.co.nz mediates.

Cruz told investigators on Friday that he was responsible for gunning down students in the hallways and on the grounds of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, north of Miami.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Cruz brought more loaded magazines to the school and kept them hidden in the backpack until he got on campus. As students began to flee, he said, he decided to discard his AR-15 rifle and a vest he was wearing so he could blend in with the crowd fleeing from the school. Police recovered the rifle and the vest. Cruz was taken into custody about 40 minutes after leaving the McDonald’s, Israel said.

A day after the attack, a fuller portrait emerged of the suspect, a loner who had worked at a dollar store, joined the school’s ROTC programme and posted photos of weapons on Instagram. At least one student said classmates joked that Cruz would “be the one to shoot up the school”.

Cruz, a 19-year-old orphan whose mother died last year, was charged with murder in the attack in thw sleepy community on the edge of the Everglades.

It was the nation’s deadliest school attack since a gunman assaulted an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, more than five years ago.

Nikolas Cruz (BROWARD COUNTY POLICE)