The family that took in Florida school shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz said they knew he was lonely, depressed and a bit odd -- but saw no warning signs that he could commit a massacre.
"We had this monster living under our roof and we didn't know," Kimberly Snead told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in an interview Saturday. "We didn't see this side of him."
Cruz came to live with the Snead family, whose son was friendly with Cruz, after his adopted mother died last November. The family gave Cruz a home, enrolled him in adult-education classes and helped him get a job at a local Dollar Tree store.
The Sneads said that Cruz seemed depressed, but they did not sense, as others have said, that Cruz was someone likely to be a school shooter.
"Everything everybody seems to know, we didn't know," James Snead told the Sun Sentinel. "It's as simple as that."
On the day of the shooting, Cruz told the family he didn't need a ride to school, saying, "It's Valentine's Day and I don't go to school on Valentine's Day." Kimberly Snead saw Cruz at about 10 a.m. on the day of the shooting, with no sense of what was to come.
Cruz texted with the Sneads' teenage son later that day and even asked him what classroom at Stoneman Douglas he was in. When the shooting began, the son managed to flee unharmed to a nearby middle school, according to the Sun Sentinel.
The Sneads allowed Cruz to bring his firearms into the home, but they made him buy a locking gun safe, they told the Sun Sentinel.
They said they told Cruz he needed to ask permission to take out the guns.
James Snead thought he had the only key to the safe, but he now believes Cruz kept one for himself, he told the paper.