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Could not find the original school shooting Post.


FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Anthony Borges, the teenager who took five bullets while blocking a doorway during Nikolas Cruz’s murderous rampage through Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February, became the first victim in the case to file a lawsuit.

Alex Arreaza, the Borges family’s attorney, filed the suit electronically in Broward Circuit Court on Tuesday morning. The defendants are Cruz, 19, the estate of Cruz’s late mother, Lynda, and James and Kimberly Snead, the Parkland couple who allowed Cruz to stay in their home from late November until Feb. 14, the day of the shooting.

Also named in the suit are Henderson Behavioral Health, the Jerome Golden Center for Behavioral Health and the South County Mental Health Center, three facilities that treated Cruz for various mental health conditions.
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The lawsuit charges Cruz with assault and battery, while the remaining parties are charged with negligence.

Lynda Cruz died of pneumonia on Nov. 1, leaving Nikolas and his brother, Zachary, without parents — their father died in 2004. Zachary Cruz moved in with Rocxanne Deschamps, a family friend in Lantana. Nikolas Cruz stayed with her until the Sneads offered to take him in.

After the shooting, James Snead said he had previously made Cruz buy a locking gun safe to put in his room. At the time, Snead said he thought he had the only key, but later concluded that Cruz must have kept a copy for himself.

Attorneys for the Sneads and the mental health treatment centers could not be reached for comment immediately Tuesday.

It is not clear whether Cruz has much in the way of assets to offer the victims of the Parkland school shooting, which left 17 dead and 17 injured. Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer is still weighing whether he has enough money to pay for a private lawyer.

At a recent hearing, Cruz’s assets were listed at less than $26,000, with lingering questions about how much his late mother’s estate is worth.

Borges, who survived the shooting, is one of a handful of victims to indicate an intent to sue the Broward School Board and the Broward Sheriff’s Office for failing to protect the students of Stoneman Douglas. Arreaza has said he intends to focus that lawsuit on a school discipline agreement that he says codified a reluctance to turn problem students over to the criminal justice system.

State agencies are entitled to six months’ notice before lawsuits are filed, so the first litigation naming the school district and sheriff’s office as defendants are still months away.

Borges and fellow survivor Kyle Laman were the first to file notices of intent to sue those agencies. They were followed by survivors Elizabeth Stout and Fernanda Gadea.

But Cruz, his mother’s estate and the Snead family are not entitled to such notice, so Arreaza decided to file the Borges lawsuit Tuesday.

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Could not find the original school shooting Post.

The Predictable Insanity Surrounding the Florida Shooting
https://sigforum.com/eve/forums...35/m/3540079734/p/83