Florida school shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz attacked a detention officer at the county jail and now faces new charges including use of the officer’s electric stun device, authorities said Wednesday.
Broward Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright confirmed in an email Wednesday that Cruz assaulted Sgt. Raymond Beltran around 6 p.m. Tuesday.
Jail records show Cruz now is charged with aggravated assault on an officer, battery on an officer and use of an “electric or chemical weapon against an officer.”
The 20-year-old Cruz already faces the death penalty in the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland that killed 17 people and wounded 17 others. He’s pleaded not guilty in the shooting but his lawyers say he would plead guilty in exchange for a life prison sentence.
READ MORE: 9 months after their classmates were shot dead, Parkland survivors face their first Election Day
According to the assault arrest report, Cruz attacked Beltran after he was told to “not drag his sandals around” while walking in a jail day room. Cruz responded, the report says, by showing Beltran his middle finger and then rushing the deputy and striking him with his fist.
The report says Cruz and Beltran then “got into a physical altercation” in which both wound up on the floor and Cruz was able to wrest control of the stun gun, technically called a “conducive electronic weapon.” The stun gun discharged but it’s not clear from the report if it struck anyone and Beltran was able to regain control.
Beltran was also struck multiple times by Cruz using his fists, according to video surveillance cited by the report.
Finally, the report says Beltran struck Cruz in the face with a fist containing the stun gun and Cruz then “retreated to one of the seats” in the dayroom before he was taken into custody.
The report does not mention the severity of any injuries to either Cruz or Beltran.
“We don’t know any more than you do as of yet,” Broward County Public Defender Howard Finkelstein said in an email.
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Cruz appeared at a brief initial hearing Wednesday on the assault charges, with bail set at US$200,000. But he won’t be released because he is being held without bail on the murder charges.
Meanwhile, the state commission investigating the shooting heard Wednesday from a Pinellas County detective who investigated Cruz’s internet searches, text messages and cellphone usage in the days and months leading up to the shooting.
Sgt. John Suess showed commissioners photos from Cruz’s cellphone of Cruz with rifles, of dead animals and of racist and Nazi messages.
WATCH BELOW: Florida school shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz pleads not guilty to 17 counts of murder
Suess said Cruz’s earliest found internet search referencing school massacres happened three months to the day before the Parkland shooting. On Jan. 21, Cruz wrote himself a cellphone note saying “life is a mess” and “unfair” and that he was getting “even more agitated.”
“I want to kill people but I don’t know how to do it,” he wrote. He thought of maybe going to a park.
Suess said Cruz frequently looked up the song Pumped Up Kicks, in which a shooter sings that other kids had “better run, out run my gun.”
About a week before the shooting, Cruz searched “Is killing people easy” and for “crime scene cleanup.”
On Feb. 9, five days before the shooting, Cruz did searches seeking information about homicidal thoughts and urges and for a therapist. Some commissioners thought Cruz was having second thoughts.
But the next day, Cruz was again looking at videos about the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings.
READ MORE: Parkland school shooting suspect says voice told him to ‘kill, destroy’ in interrogation video
Three days before the shooting, Cruz made previously released cellphone videos that he never shared outlining his plans. He looked up how long it takes police to respond to school shootings.
On the morning of the shooting, Cruz sent innocuous texts to the friend he was living with about meeting some girls that night or that he might go to a movie. It was Valentine’s Day and during the two hours before the shooting, Cruz tried repeatedly to engage his ex-girlfriend in phone and text conversations, but she told him to leave her alone and that she had a boyfriend. He responded, “You will always know I love you.”
He soon contacted Uber to take him to the school.
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