THESE are the first images of
Florida school massacre suspect
Nikolas Cruz as he arrives at jail, handcuffed and wearing a hospital gown, to face charges of murdering 17 victims in one of the deadliest ever US school
shootings.
Police say the 19-year-old weapons obsessive walked into the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in
Parkland on Wednesday shortly before classes ended and opened fire on students and teachers.
He was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and had multiple magazines of ammunition when he surrendered to officers in a nearby residential area.
Images showed him being led into Broward County jail this morning under heavy police guard.
Cruz, who been expelled from the school before the shooting, was still wearing his hospital gown as he was marched from a police car into the jailhouse.
Officers appear to bump fists as he is handed over to the jail.
Cruz appears calm in the footage as he is spoken to by officials and led inside the building.
Those killed were a mix of students and adults. Twelve were killed inside the school, two just outside and one on the street, while two further victims died from their wounds in hospital.
Officials said the assailant wore a gas mask as he stalked into the school carrying a rifle, ammunition cartridges and smoke grenades.
He then pulled a fire alarm, prompting students and staff to pour from their classrooms into hallways where they were blasted with bullets.
Alongside the dead, 14 people were injured in the assault.
The shooting was the 18th in a US school this year and the deadliest ever at an American high school, surpassing the 1999 rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where two teenagers killed 12 students and a teacher and then themselves.
A chilling mobile phone video clip broadcast by CBS News showed a brief scene of what the network said was the shooting in progress from inside a classroom.
Several students were seen huddled or lying on the floor surrounded by mostly empty desks. A rapid series of loud gunshots are heard amid hysterical screaming and someone yelling, "Oh my God."
The gunman was arrested later outside, some distance from the school in an adjacent community.
CNN, citing law enforcement sources, said the gunman tried to blend in with students who were fleeing the school but was spotted and taken into custody.
Cruz loved guns and had posted photographs on social media posing with weapons, police and former classmates said.
Teachers at the school had discussed threats made by Cruz while he was a student there, before he was expelled for fighting.
One student said yesterday: “I think everyone had in their minds if anybody was going to do it, it was going to be him.”
Cruz’s mother died three years ago and his father died when he was a child.
Staff and students said a fire alarm went off around the time the shooting started, sparking chaos as some 3,300 students at the school first headed into hallways before teachers herded them back into classrooms.
One survivor, Kyle Yeoward, 16, said he and about 15 fellow students and a teacher hid in a closet for nearly two hours before police arrived.
Kyle said most of the shooting occurred in the building for the school's freshman class.
Lissette Rozenblat, whose daughter goes to the school, said: "It is just absolutely horrifying. I can't believe this is happening.”
The school had recently held a meeting to discuss what to do in such an attack, Ryan Gott, a 15-year-old freshman, told CNN.
President Donald Trump tweeted afterwards: "My prayers and condolences to the families of the victims of the terrible Florida shooting.
”No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school."