Caller told FBI Florida shooting suspect ‘going to explode’
WASHINGTON — A woman close to the man charged with killing 17 people at a Florida high school warned the FBI in chilling detail that he had a growing collection of guns and a temper so uncontrollable she worried about him “getting into a school and just shooting the place up.”
The Associated Press on Friday obtained a transcript of the Jan. 5 tip to the FBI’s call center. The FBI acknowledged it failed to investigate the tip about 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, but the transcript provides the fullest glimpse yet into the seriousness of the woman’s concerns.
“I know he’s going to explode,” she told the call-taker.
The FBI briefed congressional staff Friday about its failure to act on the alarming tip, as well as why it did not delve into a September 2017 YouTube comment posted by a “Nikolas Cruz” that said, “Im going to be a professional school shooter.” The FBI linked the January call to the report of the YouTube comment, but an FBI intake specialist and a supervisor at the call center took no further action, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley’s office said Friday.
Google, which owns YouTube, also briefed congressional staffers.
Deaths mounts in Syria as UN weighs cease-fire resolution
BEIRUT — Syrian government warplanes carried out a sixth day of airstrikes Friday in the rebel-held suburbs east of Damascus, killing 32 people, activists said, as the death toll from a week of bombardment soared over 400.
At the United Nations, a vote on a Security Council resolution demanding a 30-day humanitarian cease-fire across Syria was delayed until Saturday to try to close a gap over the timing of a halt to fighting.
The new bombings came a day after Syrian army helicopters dropped leaflets over the rebel-controlled areas of eastern Ghouta, urging residents of those suburbs to leave for their own safety and calling on opposition fighters to surrender because they were surrounded by government troops.
Opposition activists reported airstrikes and artillery shelling on a string of towns on the edge of Damascus or eastern Ghouta.
At least 32 people were killed in raids on areas including Hammouriyeh, Zamalka, Douma and al-Marj, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors the civil war through a network of activists in Syria.
California parents face new charges in kids’ torture case
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A Southern California couple suspected of starving and shackling some of their 13 children pleaded not guilty Friday to new charges of child abuse.
David and Louise Turpin previously entered not-guilty pleas to torture and a raft of other charges and are being held on $12 million bail.
Louise Turpin also pleaded not guilty to a new count of felony assault.
Louise Turpin, dressed in a blouse and blazer, looked intently at more than a dozen reporters in the courtroom. David Turpin, wearing a blazer, tie and black-rimmed glasses, kept his eyes on the judge during the hearing. Both said little except to agree to a May preliminary hearing.
The couple was arrested last month after their 17-year-old daughter escaped from the family’s home in Perris, California, and called 911. Authorities said the home reeked of human waste and evidence of starvation was obvious, with the oldest sibling weighing only 82 pounds.
US visa boss insists mission statement isn’t anti-immigrant
SAN DIEGO — The head of the federal agency that grants visas said Friday that he had a message for anyone who considers his new mission statement anti-immigrant: “A thousand times no.”
Francis Cissna told The Associated Press that he cut reference to the U.S. being a “nation of immigrants” from Citizenship and Immigration Services’ mission statement because a “bureaucratic” document was the wrong platform to say so. He said the country is indisputably a nation of immigrants.
The agency’s mission statement is “not something where you put eternal professions of American values. That sort of thing belongs chiseled in the wall of a monument, not in some bureaucratic mission statement,” he said.
Cissna said he was surprised by criticism after announcing the change Thursday to his 18,000 employees. He said the White House had no involvement.
“This was all inside my head,” he said.