Carlin Becker
After investigators revealed Florida school shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz took an Uber to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where he fatally shot 17 people and injured over a dozen more, the driver who dropped him off is speaking out about that fateful day.
“I saw him with a backpack which I thought was a guitar case,” the driver, who wished to remain anonymous, told CBS4. “He told me I am going to my music class.”
Before taking him to his former high school, the driver said she didn’t think twice about his destination and that he appeared to be very calm and quiet during the 13-minute ride in her car.
“Just a normal person,” she recalled. “I didn’t see anything strange or something like that, no.”
After dropping him off, she unknowingly went on her way while Cruz unleashed rounds of bullets from his AR-15 on students, teachers and faculty members. Even after news of the shooting broke, the driver still didn’t realize the shooter had been in her vehicle.
“I saw the news and I thought, ‘Oh, I just left someone over there.’ But I never knew it was the guy in my car,” she recalled. “I have passengers in my car and I’m scared because anybody can have a gun.”
The Broward County Sheriff’s Office eventually contacted her to inform her that she had in fact dropped off the shooting suspect and to search her car for bullets, guns or writings that Cruz may have left behind. They didn’t find anything, and Sheriff Scott Israel assured her that she need not worry because she has “nothing to do with this.” The driver, however, can’t help feeling connected to the shooting, especially after making another Uber ride to one of the victim’s funerals.
“I made an Uber and I went to a funeral and I started to cry,” she said. “I don’t know. I feel involved with all this tragedy.”
