The Jim Bakker Show

Florida school plans moment of silence for bridge collapse victims

FILE PHOTO: Aerial view shows a pedestrian bridge collapsed at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, U.S., March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo

MIAMI (Reuters) – Florida International University (FIU) students return to classes on Monday from spring break with a moment of silence planned campus-wide for the six victims of a newly installed pedestrian bridge at the school that collapsed last week.

Since last week, federal investigators have been looking over the wreckage of the 950-ton bridge that crushed vehicles stopped at a traffic light on the eight-lane road below when it fell on Thursday in a rain of metal, concrete and debris.

All six victim have been identified, with the final one being named on Sunday. Those killed were Rolando Fraga, 60, Oswald Gonzalez, 57, Alberto Arias, 53, Alexa Duran, 18, Navaro Brown, 37, and Brandon Brownfield, whose age has not been released.

Firefighters spray water on debris from a collapsed pedestrian bridge at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, U.S., March 16, 2018. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

The moment of silence will be a 1:47 p.m., when the bridge collapsed, the school said, adding it has designated spots for those who want to leave flowers and other tokens of remembrance for those killed.

“Our hearts break for the victims of the bridge collapse. Lives have been lost. Futures and families shattered,” FIU President Mark Rosenberg said in a statement over the weekend.

Engineers and state and university officials met hours before the pedestrian bridge collapsed, but concluded a crack in the structure was not a safety concern, Florida International University said on Saturday.

The meeting on Thursday involved FIGG, which is the private contractor for the overall bridge design, the school, Florida Department of Transportation officials and Munilla Construction Management, which installed the $14.2 million bridge.

A FIGG engineer “concluded there were no safety concerns and the crack did not compromise the structural integrity of the bridge,” the university said in a statement.

About three hours after the meeting ended, the bridge collapsed.

The bridge over one of the busiest road in South Florida was designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, the most dangerous measure by the National Hurricane Center, and built to last 100 years, the university said.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Cars, bodies remain trapped out of reach after Florida bridge collapse

First responders are shown as rescue efforts continue after a pedestrian bridge collapsed at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, U.S., March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

By Zachary Fagenson

MIAMI (Reuters) – Rescue workers combed through the rubble of a pedestrian bridge that collapsed onto several lanes of traffic at Florida International University in Miami, but hopes of finding more survivors were fading early on Friday, police said.

Six people were confirmed dead after the newly built 950-ton bridge crushed vehicles on one of the busiest roads in South Florida on Thursday. With at least eight vehicles buried and out of reach beneath the rubble, the death toll could rise, Juan Perez, the Miami-Dade Police Department director, said on Friday.

“There must be some others in the vehicles,” Perez told Miami’s NewsRadio 610 WIOD. “We know there’s bodies down there and we can’t get to them. It’s terrible.”

Emergency personnel with sniffer dogs searched for signs of life overnight.

At least 10 people were taken to hospitals and two remained in critical condition, officials and local media reported.

Witnesses told local media the vehicles were stopped at a traffic light when the bridge collapsed on top of them at around 1:30 p.m. ET (1730 GMT).

At one point, police urged television helicopters to leave the area so that rescuers could hear any cries for help from those trapped beneath the collapsed structure, CBS Miami television said.

Uncertainty over the stability of remaining sections of the bridge hampered rescue efforts, officials said.

Aerial view shows a pedestrian bridge collapsed at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, U.S., March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

INSTALLED ON SATURDAY

The 174-feet (53-meter) long bridge connects the university with the city of Sweetwater and was installed on Saturday in six hours over the eight-lane highway, according to a report posted on the university’s website.

“If anybody has done anything wrong, we will hold them accountable,” Florida Governor Rick Scott said at a news briefing late Thursday.

His office earlier issued a statement saying a company contracted to inspect the bridge was not pre-qualified by the state.

The bridge was intended to provide a walkway over the busy street where an 18-year-old female FIU student from San Diego was killed as she attempted to cross it in August, according to local media reports.

Students at FIU are currently on their spring break vacation, which runs from March 12 to March 17.

To keep the inevitable disruption of traffic associated with bridge construction to a minimum, the 174-foot portion of the bridge was built adjacent to Southwest 8th Street, using a method called Accelerated Bridge Construction. It was driven into its perpendicular position across the road by a rig in only six hours on Saturday, according to a statement released by the university.

The $14.2 million bridge was designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, the most dangerous measure by the National Hurricane Center, and built to last 100 years, the university said. (http://bit.ly/2tQ2ARg)

Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board were on the scene early on Friday to investigate why it collapsed.

(Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus, Joseph Ax, Daniel Wallis, Jonathan Allen and Andrew Hay in New York, Scott Malone in Boston, Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, James Oliphant in Washington, Keith Coffman in Colorado and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Bernadette Baum)

U.S. House passes bill to help schools combat gun violence

People supporting gun control attend a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing about legislative proposals to improve school safety in the wake of the mass shooting at the high school in Parkland, Florida, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

By Lisa Lambert and Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed legislation to help schools and local law enforcement prevent gun violence, one month after the mass shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17 people.

The House passed the bill by a vote of 407-10, sending it to the Senate for consideration.

Earlier on Wednesday, the White House announced President Donald Trump’s support of the bill, which is far short of the broader gun control legislation he talked about shortly after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Since that massacre, student protesters have successfully lobbied for tighter gun controls in Florida. Hundreds of them gathered outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday to take their argument to a Congress that has long resisted placing new limits on firearms and gun sales.

The House-passed bill would authorize federal grants, totaling $50 million a year, to fund training, anonymous reporting systems, threat assessments, intervention teams and school and police coordination.

The measure, however, would not allow any of the funding to be used for arming teachers or other school personnel. The White House said the legislation would be improved by lifting that restriction.

“The best way to keep our students and teachers safe is to give them the tools and the training to recognize the warning signs to prevent violence from ever entering our school grounds, and this bill aims to do just that,” said Republican Representative John Rutherford of Florida, a former sheriff who sponsored the school safety bill.

It was not yet clear when the Senate would take up the House-passed bill.

Already awaiting action in the Senate is a bill to strengthen existing background checks of gun purchasers. It enjoys broad bipartisan support but has not been scheduled for debate.

Congressional aides said there were ongoing discussions about possibly folding the school safety and background check bills into a massive government funding bill that Congress aims to pass by March 23.

Eleven organizations, including some gun control and law enforcement groups, on Wednesday sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer urging passage this month of the background checks bill.

Neither the House nor Senate bills address many of the gun control initiatives backed by students, teachers and families of shooting victims at the Florida school.

In emotional testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Katherine Posada, a teacher at the school, recounted the horror she experienced the day of the shooting and urged Congress to ban assault-style weapons like the AR-15 rifle used by Nikolas Cruz, who has been charged in the murders.

“Some of the victims were shot through doors, or even through walls – a knife can’t do that,” Posada said. “How many innocent lives could have been saved if these weapons of war weren’t so readily available?”

Since the Florida shooting, the Republican-led Congress and Trump’s administration have considered a variety of measures to curb gun violence while trying to avoid upsetting the powerful National Rifle Association lobby group or threatening the right to bear arms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

Protesters with signs targeting the NRA and advocating an assault rifle ban filled the hearing room in the Senate on Wednesday and occasionally applauded as some Democrats on the panel spoke about enacting stricter gun laws.

Meanwhile, the No. 2 official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation told lawmakers in testimony Wednesday that his agency dropped the ball by mishandling several tips about Cruz before the shooting, and said reforms were underway.

“The FBI could have and should have done more to investigate the information it was provided prior to the shooting,” Acting Deputy Director David Bowdich said.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Lisa Lambert, David Alexander and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Tom Brown and Jonathan Oatis)

Trump would sign bill on schools, guns about to pass House: statement

FILE PHOTO: President Donald Trump waves as he arrives to speak in support of Rick Saccone during a Make America Great Again rally in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, March 10, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump is ready to sign legislation intended to curb school violence that was inspired by last month’s mass shooting at a Florida high school, and which the House of Representatives is poised to pass later on Wednesday.

In a statement released on Wednesday the White House said the legislation would help protect children and reiterated its support for arming teachers or other school personnel. It said the bill “would be improved by eliminating the restriction on the use of funds to provide firearms training for those in a position to provide students with appropriate, armed defense.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan, a fellow Republican, told reporters that the chamber would pass the legislation, which would authorize $50 million a year to help schools and law enforcement agencies prevent violent attacks, on Wednesday. But with the Senate considering other legislation this week and next, any gun legislation may not reach Trump’s desk before April.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Richard Cowan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Students launch walkout against gun violence in United States

A small group of anti-gun protesters hold a vigil outside the Vermont State

By Gina Cherelus

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Students walked out of classrooms across the United States on Wednesday, waving signs and chanting their demands for tighter gun safety laws, joining a movement spearheaded by survivors of the deadly shooting spree at a Florida high school last month.

The #ENOUGH National School Walkout began at 10 a.m. EDT with 17-minute walkouts planned at 10 a.m. local time in western time zones, commemorating the 17 students and staff killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14.

Students arrive for class at Columbine High School before participating in a National School Walkout to honor the 17 students and staff members killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in Littleton, Colorado, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Some students got in an early start. At Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in New York City, crowds of students poured into the streets of Manhattan, many dressed in orange, the color of the gun-control movement.

“Thoughts and prayers are not enough,” read one sign, needling the rote response many lawmakers make after mass shootings.

In Parkland, students slowly filed onto the Stoneman Douglas school football field as law enforcement officers looked on.

The walkouts are part of a burgeoning, grass-roots movement that grew out of the Parkland attack. Some of the survivors have lobbied state and federal lawmakers, and even met with President Donald Trump, to call for new restrictions on gun ownership, a right protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“If our elected officials don’t take responsibility for their inaction on both sides of the aisle, then we are going to kick them out of office,” David Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas student, said in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday.

The students’ efforts helped bring about a tightening of Florida’s gun laws last week, when the minimum age for buying any kind of gun was raised to 21 years from 18, although lawmakers there rejected a ban on the sort of semiautomatic rifle used in the Parkland attack.

In Washington, however, plans to strengthen the background-check system for gun sales, among other measures, appear to be languishing.

A large crowd of students gathered and chanted slogans outside the gates of the White House. Trump, however, was out of town on a trip to California.

Students from more than 2,800 schools and groups are joining the walkouts, many with the backing of their school districts, according to the event’s organizers, who also coordinated the Women’s March protests staged nationwide over the past two years.

Support has also come from the American Civil Liberties Union and Viacom Inc <VIAB.O>, which said all seven of its networks, including MTV, would suspend programming at 10 a.m. in each U.S. time zone during the 17-minute walkout.

The protests took place a day after Florida prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty for Nikolas Cruz, who has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the Parkland attack.

The New York City Department of Education allowed students to participate if they submitted a signed permission slip from their parents.

But a few school districts around the country had warned against protests during school hours.

Administrators in Sayreville, New Jersey, told students that anyone who walked out of class would face suspension or other punishment, according to myCentralJersey.com.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen and Alice Popovici in New York, Joe Skipper in Parkland, Florida, and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Frank McGurty and Jonathan Oatis)

Florida lawmakers to vote on gun laws, arming teachers

FILE PHOTO: Messages, posted on a fence, hang, as students and parents attend a voluntary campus orientation at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, for the coming Wednesday's reopening, following last week's mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, U.S., February 25, 2018. REUTERS/Angel Valentin/File photo

(Reuters) – Florida’s Senate will vote on Monday on some gun-related measures in response to last month’s deadly school shooting, including a proposal to train and arm teachers, but lawmakers have rejected a call by some students to ban assault weapons in the state.

The proposed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act is named after the high school in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and staff were shot dead on Feb. 14.

Student survivors of the Parkland shooting have become prominent advocates for stricter gun laws, with some calling for a ban on semiautomatic assault-style rifles of the sort used in that attack and other recent U.S. mass shootings, as well as high-capacity magazines.

The state Senate rejected such a ban in a vote held over the weekend.

The Senate bill echoes many proposals made by Governor Rick Scott, a Republican, since the shooting, including new powers for police to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed to be dangerous by a court.

The bill would raise the minimum age for buying any kind of gun to 21, from a current minimum of 18 for all weapons but handguns. It would also ban bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire like fully automatic machine guns, and mandate a three-day waiting period for the purchase of all guns, not just handguns.

The Senate’s Republican majority is expected to vote to pass the bill, Katie Betta, a spokeswoman for Senate President Joe Negron, said. The measure will then move to the legislature’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives for a vote.

The bill would require the governor’s signature to take effect. Scott has said he opposes one of the bill’s more scrutinized measures: allowing county sheriffs to set up voluntary training programs to arm teachers to prevent future massacres, similar to an idea also proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Sheriffs who choose to set up a so-called “school marshal” program would have to ensure that any teacher or other school staff member who opts to become one has a valid license and has completed 132 hours of shooting and safety training.

The bill says that “a school marshal has no authority to act in any law enforcement capacity except to the extent necessary to prevent or abate an active assailant incident on a school premises.”

Some families of the victims from Douglas High School said they would hold a news conference on Monday afternoon about the legislature’s efforts, which would increase funding for school safety and mental health measures.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Tom Brown)

Twenty states sue federal government, seeking end to Obamacare

FILE PHOTO: A sign on an insurance store advertises Obamacare in San Ysidro, San Diego, California, U.S., October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

(Reuters) – A coalition of 20 U.S. states sued the federal government on Monday over Obamacare, claiming the law was no longer constitutional after the repeal last year of its requirement that people have health insurance or pay a fine.

Led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, the lawsuit said that without the individual mandate, which was eliminated as part of the Republican tax law signed by President Donald Trump in December, Obamacare was unlawful.

“The U.S. Supreme Court already admitted that an individual mandate without a tax penalty is unconstitutional,” Paxton said in a statement. “With no remaining legitimate basis for the law, it is time that Americans are finally free from the stranglehold of Obamacare, once and for all,” he said.

The U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the Trump administration would defend the law in court.

The individual mandate in Obamacare was meant to ensure a viable health insurance market by forcing younger and healthier Americans to buy coverage.

Republicans have opposed the 2010 law formally known as the Affordable Care Act, the signature domestic policy achievement of Trump’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, since its inception.

Paxton and Schimel, both Republicans, were joined in the lawsuit by 18 states including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Utah and West Virginia. It was filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Texas.

(Reporting by Eric Beech in Washington)

Sheriff faces mounting criticism over Florida school massacre

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel speaks before the start of a CNN town hall meeting at the BB&T Center, in Sunrise, Florida, U.S. February 21, 2018. REUTERS/Michael Laughlin/Pool/File Photo

By Steve Gorman and Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – A Florida sheriff came under mounting criticism on Sunday for his deputies’ response to this month’s deadly high school shooting and potential warning signs as dozens of state lawmakers called for his ouster and the governor ordered an independent inquiry.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel insisted that only one of his armed deputies is so far known to have been at fault for staying outside the school while it was under attack rather than entering to confront the gunman who shot 17 people to death.

That deputy, identified as the school’s assigned resource officer, Scot Petersen, has resigned rather than face suspension and possible dismissal after his actions were caught on video during the massacre, the sheriff acknowledged last week.

News outlets including CNN and NBC have since reported that at least three more armed Broward County sheriff’s deputies were present on the scene, taking cover behind their vehicles instead of immediately going into the school.

Israel sought to dismiss those reports, based on unnamed sources from the neighboring Coral Springs Police Department, which also responded to the shooting.

“Our investigation to this point shows that during this horrific attack, while this killer was inside the school, there was only one law enforcement person, period, and that was former deputy Scot Peterson,” Israel said in a CNN interview on Sunday.

Israel did not rule out, however, that the investigation could find other deputies who failed to act properly during or immediately after the Feb. 14 rampage, which authorities said lasted about six or seven minutes.

The sheriff said separately on Twitter that he welcomed an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, as requested by Governor Rick Scott, to examine the response by local police and the sheriff’s office.

“This independent, outside review will ensure public confidence in the findings,” Israel said.

Fourteen students and three adult educators were slain when a gunman opened fire with a semiautomatic AR-15-style assault rifle inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, an affluent suburb of Fort Lauderdale.

Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old former student who was expelled last year for disciplinary problems, was later arrested and charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.

Authorities have said Cruz made his getaway moments after the shooting by blending in with students fleeing the school and was later apprehended after strolling through a nearby Walmart store and stopping at two fast-food outlets.

Well-wishers place mementos the day students and parents arrive for voluntary campus orientation at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, for the coming Wednesday’s reopening, following last week’s mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, U.S., February 25, 2018. REUTERS/Angel Valentin

The sheriff rejected calls for his removal as politically motivated and defended his department from criticism that his deputies overlooked a number of telltale signs that Cruz posed a threat of violence.

“I can only take responsibility for what I knew about,” Israel, a Democrat, told CNN, adding that he had “given amazing leadership” since he was first elected sheriff in 2012.

Besides Peterson’s resignation, Israel has previously said two other deputies have been placed on restricted duty pending an internal review of whether they properly handled two telephone tips – from 2016 and 2017 – warning that Cruz was collecting weapons and might be inclined to commit a school shooting.

The sheriff told CNN on Sunday that 16 other “calls for service” his department received about Cruz before the massacre were properly handled. Others disagreed.

A letter on Sunday signed by 74 Republican members of the Florida House of Representatives urged Scott, also a Republican, to suspend Israel under a provision of the state constitution that lets the governor remove a sheriff for “malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty [or] incompetence.”

“In the years leading up to this unspeakable tragedy, Sheriff Israel, his deputies and staff ignored repeated warning signs about the violent, erratic, threatening and antisocial behavior” of the accused gunman, the letter said. It cited additional questions raised about the actions of the first deputies on the scene of the shooting.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation also has drawn public outrage by acknowledging it failed to follow proper protocols after receiving a tip that Cruz possessed a gun, had indicated the desire to kill and could carry out a school shooting.

FBI officials have told families of victims they “deeply regret” their mishandling of the matter.

The carnage in Parkland, marking the second-deadliest U.S. public school shooting on record, has reignited an intense U.S. debate about firearms safety laws, with Stoneman Douglas students emerging as national voices calling for gun control.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Daniel Trotta in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Daniel Wallis)

U.S. top court rejects challenge to California gun waiting period

Firearms are shown for sale at the AO Sword gun store in El Cajon, California, January 5, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake

By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In a blow to gun rights activists, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday turned away a challenge to California’s 10-day waiting period for firearms purchases that is intended to guard against impulsive violence and suicides.

The court’s action underscored its continued reluctance to step into the national debate over gun control roiled by a series of mass shootings including one at a Florida school last week. One of the court’s most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas, dissented from the decision to reject the case and accused his colleagues of showing contempt toward constitutional protections for gun rights.

The gun rights groups and individual gun owners who challenged the law had argued that it violated their right to keep and bear arms under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. The challengers did not seek to invalidate California’s waiting period for everyone, just for people who already owned guns and passed a background check.

In his dissent, Thomas scolded his colleagues. “If a lower court treated another right so cavalierly, I have little doubt this court would intervene,” Thomas wrote. “But as evidenced by our continued inaction in this area, the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in this court.”

The Supreme Court has not taken up a major firearms case since issuing important gun rulings in 2008 and 2010.

The United States has among the most lenient gun control laws in the world. With the U.S. Congress deeply divided over gun control, it has fallen to states and localities to impose firearms restrictions. Democratic-governed California has some of the broadest firearms measures of any state.

A series of mass shootings including one in which a gunman killed 17 people at a Parkland, Florida high school on Feb. 14 have added to the long-simmering U.S. debate over gun control and the availability of firearms.

In another gun case, the high court on Tuesday also declined to take up a National Rifle Association challenge to California’s refusal to lower its fees on firearms sales and instead use a surplus generated by the fees to fund efforts to track down illegal weapons.

Thomas said he suspected that the Supreme Court would readily hear cases involving potentially unconstitutional waiting periods if they involved abortion, racist publications or police traffic stops.

“The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this court’s constitutional orphan. And the lower courts seem to have gotten the message,” Thomas added.

Lead plaintiff Jeff Silvester, the Calguns Foundation and its executive director Brandon Combs, and the Second Amendment Foundation in 2011 challenged the 10-day waiting period between the purchase of a firearm and its actual delivery to the buyer, saying it violated the Second Amendment for individuals who already lawfully own a firearm or are licensed to carry one.

The waiting period gives a gun buyer inclined to use it for an impulsive purpose a “cooling off” period before obtaining it, which has been shown in studies to reduce handgun suicides and homicides, the state said in a legal filing. The waiting period also gives officials time to run background checks and ensure that weapons being sold are not stolen or being purchased for someone prohibited from gun ownership, the state said.

The states of California, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Illinois, Minnesota, Florida, Iowa, Maryland and New Jersey as well as Washington, D.C., have waiting periods that vary in duration and type of firearm, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gun control advocacy group.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld California’s law in 2016, reversing a federal trial court that had ruled it unconstitutional.

Last year, the Supreme Court left in place a California law that bars permits to carry a concealed gun in public places unless the applicant can show “good cause” for having it.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

FBI was warned about Florida man accused of killing 17 at school

By Bernie Woodall and Zachary Fagenson

PARKLAND, Fla. (Reuters) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation was warned in September about an ominous online comment by the 19-year-old man accused of killing 17 people at his former high school but was unable to locate him, an agent said on Thursday.

Authorities said the ex-student, identified as Nikolas Cruz, walked into the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, near Miami, on Wednesday and opened fire with an AR-15-style assault rifle in the second-deadliest shooting at a public school in U.S. history.

Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School attend a memorial following a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, U.S., February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Thom Baur

Cruz may have left warning signs on social media in the form of a comment on a YouTube video that read “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” That comment troubled the person whose video Cruz commented on, Mississippi bail bondsman Ben Bennight, who passed it on to the FBI, according to a video he posted online late Wednesday.

“No other information was included with that comment which would indicate a time, location or the true identity of the person who made the comment,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Lasky told reporters. Investigators were unable to find the commenter, he added.

The FBI is conducting an extensive review of how it handled that tip to see if mistakes were made, a federal law enforcement official told Reuters.

Wednesday’s shooting was the 18th in a U.S. school this year, according to gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. It stirred the long-simmering U.S. debate on the right to bear arms, which is protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

President Donald Trump addressed the shooting in a White House speech that emphasized school safety and mental health while avoiding any mention of gun policy.

“It is not enough to simply take actions that make us feel like we are making a difference,” Trump said at the White House. “We must actually make that difference.”

Broward County schools superintendent Robert Runcie called for action on gun laws.

“Now is the time for this country to have a real conversation on sensible gun control laws,” Runcie told a news conference.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives criticized the Republican leadership for refusing to take up legislation on tightening background checks for prospective gun buyers.

Mourners react during a community prayer vigil for victims of yesterday’s shooting at nearby Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, at Parkridge Church in Pompano Beach, Florida, U.S., February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

“It’s appalling,” Representative Mike Thompson told reporters. “Thirty people every day are killed by someone using a gun, and the best we can do is say we need more information?”

The Republican-controlled Congress last year revoked Obama-era regulations meant to make it harder for those with severe mental illness to pass FBI background checks for guns, saying the rule deprived the mentally ill of their gun rights.

At least one member of Trump’s cabinet called for action.

“Personally I think the gun violence, it’s a tragedy what we’ve seen yesterday, and I urge Congress to look at these issues,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers.

Fifteen people were injured in Wednesday’s shooting, according to local hospital officials.

‘BROKEN HUMAN BEING’

Cruz’s court-appointed lawyer said he had expressed remorse for his crimes.

“He’s a broken human being,” public defender Melisa McNeill told reporters. “He’s sad, he’s mournful he’s remorseful.”

Nikolas Cruz (C) appears via video monitor with Melisa McNeill (R), his public defender, at a bond court hearing after being charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S., February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Susan Stocker/Pool

Cruz had done paramilitary training with a white nationalist militia called the Republic of Florida, a leader of the group said.

“He had some involvement with the Clearwater Republic of Florida cell at some point,” Jordan Jereb said in a telephone interview. Reuters could not immediately verify the claim.

Cruz loved guns and had been expelled from high school for disciplinary reasons, police and former classmates said.

Authorities said he marched into the school wearing a gas mask and tossed smoke grenades, as well as pulling a fire alarm that sent students and staff pouring from classrooms as he began his rampage, according to Florida’s two U.S. senators, who were briefed by federal authorities.

In a brief court appearance, Cruz spoke only two words, “Yes ma’am,” when a judge asked him to confirm his name. He was ordered held without bond.

Cruz had recently moved in with another family after his mother’s death in November, according to Jim Lewis, a lawyer representing the family and local media, bringing his AR-15 along with his other belongings.

The family believed Cruz was depressed, but attributed that to his mother’s death, not mental illness.

Victims included an assistant football coach who sheltered students, a social science teacher and multiple students.

People who live on same street as Cruz said he alarmed them by shooting squirrels and rabbits in the neighborhood as well as chickens being raised in a nearby backyard. Several times a year, they observed law enforcement officials at his house.

“Killing animals was no problem for this young man,” said Rhoda Roxburgh, 45, who lived on the block for several years and whose parents continue to live there.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen and Peter Szekely in New York, David Alexander, Lindsay Dunsmuir, Mark Hosenball and Susan Heavey in Washington, Jon Herskovitz in Austin and Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Tom Brown)

Sign up for Jim Bakker Show