Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old suspected of gunning down 17 people at a high school in Florida on Wednesday, was loosely involved with a white supremacist group, the Anti-Defamation League reported Thursday. A prominent member of the Republic of Florida — a self-proclaimed "white civil rights organization" — told the ADF that Cruz had attended one of their training events and had been "brought up" by another ROF member.
The ADL first discovered Cruz's connection to the ROF on 4chan, a controversial online message board frequented by trolls and white supremacists. In the aftermath of the shooting, where Cruz allegedly stormed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School armed with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a 4chan user claiming to be a member of the ROF posted about Cruz's membership with the group.
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