Tipster to FBI: 'I know he's going to explode'

It isn't known what a tipster has to do to get law enforcement to take action. Maybe tipsters need to have photographic or video evidence before the police or FBI take them seriously, and unfortunately, that wasn't the case in the Valentine's Day shooting spree in Parkland, Florida, and the warnings were definitely not subtle.

"I know he's going to explode," a woman who knew the shooter said on the FBI's tip line on January 5. She feared that he might try slipping "into a school and just start shooting the place up."

Forty days after the tip, the 19-year-old shooter and former student of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School did just that, killing 17 people.

But even before that tip, another tipster, three months before the massacre, called the Palm Beach County sheriff's office. This person, a family friend, dialed 911 and said, "I need someone here because I'm afraid he comes back and he has a lot of weapons."

You can see the transcript with the family member and judge for yourself just how law enforcement handled the case.

The shooter himself called authorities soon after Thanksgiving to say he had been in a fight and was struggling over the death of his mother. "The thing is I lost my mother a couple of weeks ago, so like I m dealing with a bunch of things right now," he said in a childlike voice that was agitated and breathless.

Then there were tip-offs to the FBI about disturbing social media posts that weren't enough to motivate the agency to intervene.

Then there were visits by a child welfare agency to his home in which the social worker deemed him not to be a danger to himself or others. So nothing was done and they dropped the proverbial ball.

Then there were dozens of calls to 911 and local law enforcement, some saying that he was capable of violence. But that didn't stir up any movement on the part of the Broward County Sheriff's Office.

But the Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, who knew about the shooter and the fact that at the very least, the officer responsible for protecting the students failed miserably to do so because he hid safely outside the building while the shooter killed people, blames the problem on the NRA.



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