PARKLAND, Fla. — The family that was housing alleged school shooter Nikolas Cruz has virtually gone into hiding in the wake of Wednesday’s massacre, refusing to speak about the ticking time bomb who had been living under their roof.
“I have no comment,” a visibly emotional Kimberly Snead, eyes swollen and cheeks reddened, told The Post outside her home Friday morning. “Please respect my family and my privacy now.”
Snead and her husband — whose own 17-year-old son attends Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and was there when Cruz allegedly went on a deadly rampage with an AR-15 rifle Wednesday — took him in after his mother died in November, according to the family’s lawyer.
“This family is heart-broken. They opened up their home to him,” lawyer Jim Lewis has told the Palm Beach Post. “They didn’t have any clues. They didn’t see anything in this kid, that he was a danger or that he harbored any ill feelings toward the high school.”
It’s a starkly different story from former neighbors of the Cruz family, who say the troubled teen was known for torturing animals and that cops visited the home due to his behavior frequently — 39 times in seven years, according to police records.
And someone “close to” Cruz knew he was about to snap just a month ago — reporting to the FBI that he had a “desire to kill people” and was a potential school shooter, the agency admitted Friday.
The Sneads — who live in an isolated, ramshackle home in an otherwise well-to-do neighborhood — have no neighbors.