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Nikolas Cruz Told Student, 'You Better Get Out Of Here' Before School Shooting

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MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) - Prosecutors on Friday released transcripts of two interviews. One with a student and one with a school employee, who saw or spoke with Cruz moments after he walked onto the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High campus on February 14.

After an Uber driver dropped Nikolas Cruz off at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14 a freshman student, who was not named in the transcript, said he saw Cruz in a bathroom.

The student told investigators, "I looked at a guy pulling a gun out of a bag."

The student said the man with the gun "...told me you better get out of here something bad is about to happen."

The student said the man "...told me to run."

The student said he did run and told a campus security guard.

The horror of that day continues to resonate as student activists and survivors turned their pain and grief into action.

Cruz, 19, has offered to plead guilty if the death penalty is waived but prosecutors have not agreed to that. Authorities say he confessed to the crime and previously prosecutors released cellphone videos Cruz recorded in which he describes in detail what he planned to do at the school that he had attended.

Another interview released Friday was with a Stoneman Douglas security monitor who was in the building just as Cruz entered. The monitor, whose name is also redacted but who school officials have identified as David Taylor, said he saw Cruz carrying the gun bag from about a 50-yard distance down a school hallway. He had been alerted to Cruz's presence by another monitor, Andrew Medina, both of whom were well-acquainted with the troubled former student.

"And, uh, I believe he made eye contact with me. I looked at him and he immediately made a right turn into that far east stairwell," Taylor told detectives.

He said he ran up to the second floor to try to intercept Cruz but did not see the teen. Then the gunshots started.

"I heard two shots and then a volley of a bunch of shots. Then I immediately took cover inside a custodial closet on the second floor," Taylor said.

After about 10 minutes in the closet, Taylor said a police officer found him and led him outside.

"It felt like hours I was in that closet," he said.

Taylor, like Medina an assistant baseball coach at Stoneman Douglas, told detectives that he knew Cruz well from his time at the school and had frequently taken him out of class for defiant behavior and being disrespectful to teachers.

"Not only me but all of our security personnel. I would say everybody. I would, yeah, because they've all been there long enough ... I would say all the security personnel dealt with that kid," he said.

The Broward County school district has reassigned both Medina and Taylor to other schools since the shooting.

(© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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