happens. a short time ago, president trump addressed the nation about this, the 18th school shooting of this year. >> i want to speak now directly to america's children. especially those who feel lost, a lone, confused, or even scared. i want you to know that you are never alone and you never will be. >> that was the president just a short time ago. we want to start with our colleague, msnbc's ali velshi who has been reporting from parkland, florida. you're on the ground so you can give us a sense of the way that community is grieving. it's coping with this. just an awful tragedy. what is the latest on the victims as well as the suspect who we saw this morning? >> well, we're waiting for the next update. what we know obviously is 17 people have been killed. and nikolas cruz has been charged with the murders of 17 people. and shock all around this area. i have spoken to so many of the students, some teachers, about what went on not even 24 hours ago at the school here. school of 2,900 in a town of about 30,000 people. there's a lot of shock because no one expected it. they say it doesn't happen here. i've heard that respond in too many unfortunately where people think it's something that happened elsewhere in america, not in their town. cruz, 19 years old, expelled from the school for various matters. a lot of people have known him. they felt he was a bit of an outcast. unclear whether people thought that was going to lead to the kind of thing we saw yesterday. that's always hard to judge, right, people don't always know what being an outcast leads to. but a lot of the investigation now is focused on who he is, what people knew about him what should have happened. should he have been able to buy a gun right here, an ar-15 type of gun in broward county a year ago. he's 19 years old. you have to be 21 to buy a handgun in florida but 18 to buy a long gun. police largely know what happened in the school because so many of these kids had video. there were so many students around that they pieced together what happened in the school. they're now trying to piece together what happened when cruz, why it led to this. but a lot of shock all around. dismay. a sense among some of these kids of hopelessness. that how did these kids happen? how do -- you know, the sense i got is how do a lot of grown-ups, policymakers, know this happens, it keeps happening and yet it doesn't stop or they can't stop it. so frustration, shock and a great deal of sadness in parkland, florida, today, peter. >> ali, give us a sense. we know the president is going to be headed to that area. he was scheduled to go to mar-a-lago already this weekend. he now announced he'll head to the community to visit with some of the families of those who lost their lives there. what have we heard from the president? how did it sit with the people there? >> well, i was listeni ining wi survivors of what happened yesterday, a teacher and a student, and they had a lot of sort of negative responses to it. the president quoted scripture. the president really didn't say the word "gun" in the entire thing. he said "gunfire" only in reference to reporting, reports of gunfire at the school. there was a sense it was empty promises. lawmakers should be able to fix this problem but the kids don't really understand why there isn't a will and a desire to actually fix it. they felt that some of the comments not just from the president but from other lawmakers felt a little bit empty. there's a local sheriff here who has been very strong. people seem to have a lot of positive reaction in the press conference that happened just before the president spoke to what broward county sheriff steve israel had to say but not to what the president had to say. so it will be interesting to see what the reception is to the president when he comes here because people are frustrated that we can fix this and we don't. >> ali, stay with us if you can. i want to get to our team. msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos. gentlemen, nice to see both of you. jeremy, the president said we are here for you, whatever you need, whatever we can do to ease your pain. the question is how. quote is exactly what that is. what will he do. i thought what struck me and others with whom i've spoken today as they watch this is it felt like those words were fitting yesterday but today people want to have this conversation right now and it's not clear that the president's willing to invest the capital in it to make that happen. >> no, he's not politically speaking because that would be incredibly dangerous for him. it's just not something he's willing to do. there are, i would say, two issues. he will not touch for fear of angering the right. guns and abortion. he is going to be as hard right on those two as he possibly can. >> got to keep the -- >> absolutely. it's all he has left at this point, peter. but i think just when you consider how he responded as the soother in chief, as many people expect their president to be in situations like this. we've now come to know that president trump is not going to be the best suited president we've ever had to deal with these types of traumatic situations. that will be fine. not everybody is empathetic. but the problem is i think a lot of people see in this president somebody who is so willing to engage and offer opinion on such smaller things and so much quicker to do that, whether it's the appearance of a cable tv host or the father of a college basketball player. the president shoots from the hip and pick these petty little fights but yet is unwilling to speak out when tragedies like these occur. >> ali, i want to ask you quickly. what do we know about the upcoming arraignment for the suspect, the shooter? >> it's been delayed a few times. it was supposed to be one at 8:00 and it will probably be done by video but law enforcement was out here saying very clearly they've got what they believe to be solid evidence on the premeditated murder of 17 people. hopefully no more than that. and of course the attempted murder of those still in hospital. we are waiting to hear probably within the hour on that. i want to be sure i say the correct name of the sheriff, it's scott israel. >> appreciate it, ali. as we watch the aarrangement in this next hour, the possibility of bail, the challenge for state right now, what should we be watching for? >> in florida at a first heir peerance, one of the judge's jobs is to tell the defendant what he's entitled to, does he understand the charges and address the issue of pretrial release or bail. in florida, there's a strong presummings that everyone is entitled to bail unless one of two things. unless it's a capital offense or a life in prison offense which this is and the evidence is very clear and there's a great presumption. or, or there is a very serious threat to the community. either of those options is probably available to this judge. so there is grounds for denying bail. and that's likely that will happen. >> mental health, mental illness obviously already injected into this conversation as it relates to this suspect. nikolas cruz. if that was to come up here, if they say this guy's mentally ill, what happens then? >> an insanity defense, you have to essentially admit to the crime, however, at the time, i was suffering from a mental deflect. florida follows the ancient rule. and what they have to show, in florida, everyone's presumed sane. it is the burden is on the defendant to prove he was not sane. and that burden is by clear and convincing efe ining evidence. it's not easy because of that presumption of sanity. >> i want to go to some poll numbers. we're going to put those on the screen. they seem almost contradictory. voters tell pew research by overwhelming numbers they favor background checks, gun databases and assault weapons bans. in october, voters split 45% to 47% on whether they worry the government might go too far in policing guns. that's according to nbc news and "the wall street journal." broadly speaking, at least on background checks, 80% plus americans agree on this here. the deadliest mass shootings in this country have occurred in the last four or five months. the white house, the president said too soon to have this conversation. bump stocks was the issue last time. it's now come to the states to act on this because the federal government and congress has done nothing. >> you have some states moving in the opposite direction, peter, where they are loosening gun restrictions and have after other mass shootings. if you listen to the gun rights lobby, what they'll say is the answer to this isn't more restrictive policy on guns, it's allowing more people to have guns in the first place. i whatas listening to nra tv one way over here and that's the party line. what that school needed was teachers and security guards who had guns. so the safe space that the president and other republicans fall back into is talking about mental health. >> remember the one measure that the president has acted on actually was rolling back an obama era regulation that would have made it more difficult for people with mental health problems to be able to buy guns. >> that's exactly right. when congress has taken up bills that deal with how you might restrict people who have mental illness from buying guns, everything falls apart on the details because then there are privacy concerns that people raise, there are questions of going too far what type of mental illnesses are you talking about and just like any other policy question on gun control, it becomes too complicated. >> danny, you're going to stick around. there's a lot going on today. thank you very much. i appreciate your insights here. the teachers at this high school did so much to help protect their students. sara learner sheltered 15 students in a classroom. her son was at the middle school next door during the lockdown. melissa is a teacher at marjorie stoneman high school. she helped save about 19 students lives by hiding them in a closet. ladies, i'm grateful for you speaking to us. our deepest condolences. our thoughts are with you. i know thoughts can only do so much. actions are the only thing that will really effect change going forward. you've heard the conversation, this discussion about gun reforms, gun controls become a politicized phrase here, but gun reforms, gun violence reforms. what do you believe and i'll ask either of you, what do you believe should be done here? >> i -- i think that -- i think that it's ridiculous that he was able to buy a weapon that is so powerful, that he was able to do so much damage. he's 18 years old. he was able to legally buy an ar-15. i just find that unacceptable. those of us who work in schools, have our children in schools, i understand the need for people to, you know, have the second amendment. they want to hunt. they want to protect themselves. we've gone so far in the other direction. and now we're just so unwilling to have the conversation. it's become a political issue. republican/democrat. instead of politicizing the issue, we need to come together about what the majority of americans want to see done and the two parties have to work together to effect some change because otherwise we're going to be here next week and it's going to be another school. somebody else's children. that's just unacceptable. it's reached an unacceptable point. >> the president's expected to be in your community in the next day or so. if you were to speak to president trump what would you say to him? >> well, i would tell him that he needs to do more to protect us and our schools. to protect our students. to make me feel safe here now that something like this has happened. to make my son feel safe who goes to the middle school next door. you know, enough with catering to the nra. we need to do things to keep regular american citizens safe. i don't hunt, i don't own a gun. i'm a high school english teacher. i'm a journalism teacher. i'm a yearbook adviser. i'm a mom. i'm someone's wife. i'm someone's sister. i'm someone's daughter. and i should be able to feel safe in my school. and know that i'm going to go home at the end of the day. and so many people, with whom we work, you know, students we taught, can't do that now. >> sara, your son's in the middle school next door. >> yes. >> can you talk about the conversation between the two of you last night, if you had a moment to pause and think about this, what he said and what you said as a mom to him to make him feel more safe. >> once i got back up to my classroom, after we heard the shots fired outside, i texted my mom and my husband to let them know i was in my room, there was an active shooter on campus, and i texted my son, because their school was on lockdown. so i wanted to make sure he was okay and i wanted to let her know i was okay. i wasn't hurt, i wasn't shot, i was safe. he was very concerned for my safety. he's in sixth grade. he's never gone through a lockdown before. he didn't know what to expect. i told him his teacher's well trained, you know, he's in the safest place he could be. and, you know, last night i hugged my kids a little tighter. i have an 8-year-old daughter. and, you know, she cried right before bed and just said she was so scared. and, you know, i looked at her and i said, are you hugging me? yes. am i hugging you? yes. then we're fine, honey. and i'm okay. and, you know, we're all going to get through this. it's a horrible thing to go through. whether you're a parent or not. but i think regardless of us being parents, you know, at school, we all became parents yesterday. and we weren't trained to keep the kids safe but that's not what we went to college for, i should say. but, you know, at the end of the day, the kids are our top priority. and we needed to protect them and keep them safe. >> melissa, metal detectors, additional security guards or police officers walking through school hallways, would these be the way to resolve this issue or do you think there's something else we can do culturally beyond that? >> i mean, either we have 3,300 students at our school so even if you doubled our security force, that doesn't -- that doesn't put a dent in it. i think we have to start looking at the root cause. if you look at all of these shootings. some of them have to do with mental health. some of them have to do with kids that were bullied. different people have different motivations. but the common -- you know, the common factor are these semiautomatic weapons. i think we have to start talking about the fact -- instead of pretending it doesn't exist. like, it's time to stop making these generalizations and have a conversation about what we really need to do because otherwise, like i said before, we're just going to be -- it will be somebody else that's not me in front of the camera next week in the same situation who lost students, who was afraid they weren't going to go home to their kids, to their husband, and that's just unacceptable. i just think that that's -- at this point, having all these incidents that congress, president trump, the government, they have to do something. society has to do something. something has to change. >> the president this morning tweeted so many signs that the florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even exspreled from school for bad behavior. neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. but always report such instances to authorities again and again. does he have a point or do you think that actively people do come forward when they see something happening, someone who may be suspicious, someone they're concerned about on their campus? >> i believe that students come forward and faculty. i mean, we're all instructed to do so. if you see something strange, you have to report it. i don't think that this act was due to mental illness. i mean, i'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist. but, you know, to put all of the blame on mental illness and none of the blame on lack of gun control is absolutely absurd to me and when the president's here, if i'm given the opportunity, i would say that to his face. >> this was a student that was already expelled from the school. it was a student we already had an issue with. the administration addressed. he wasn't a current student on campus that the administration or students or teachers were ignoring and didn't see the signs. he was already not there. i mean, i'm sure the details will emerge as to how he managed to, you know, get on campus, but he was already dealt with in terms of every, you know, thing that we are capable of doing. >> he could buy an ar-15 legally but he couldn't buy a beer. sara and melissa, thank you very much. i appreciate your spending time with us. >> thank you. >> the suspect in the shooting had been expelled. sources say he bought that gun legally. so what can be done to stop these shootings? >> this was life or death. that actually was when i started recording because i realized that if i died and if everyone else around me died, i wanted to have our voices heard. if we couldn't carry on throughout time, our voices would echo through the video i recorded. g out after hours. not anymore, td ameritrade lets you trade select securities 24 hours a day, five days a week. that's amazing. it's a pretty big deal. so i can trade all night long? ♪ ♪ all night long... is that lionel richie? let's reopen the market. mr. richie, would you ring the 24/5 bell? sure can, jim. ♪ trade 24/5, only with td ameritrade. we're back now live on msnbc. 17 lives were lost yesterday. at least 14 others there were injured. some of them still being treated for life threatening injuries. my colleague tammy leitner joining me now from parkland. you were listening this morning when they spoke about those 14 who were wounded. 5, as we understand, with life threatening injuries. what more do we know about the victims and about those who are still recovering right now? >> right, peter, of those 14 who were injured, we know 5 of them are still in the hospital. we do know there were a number of surgeries that happened overnight. some patients were released. of those five still there, obviously in critical condition. we are being told they may be sending some of them home today. it's hard to tell. they're at several hospitals. one thing i want to point out, we spoke with the doctors just a little while ago who treated some of these patients and they told me that for the last nine months, they have been training for a scenario exactly like this. they've been working with the fire department and with the police department and so they were ready when this happened. peter, i'm actually here with one of the first responders who was one of the very first people on the scene. and some of the things he's been telling me about he saw were horrific but he also saved a number of lives. if you could just tell me what was it like when you first got there? >> well, it's a horrific scene all across the board. my fire chief and my first responders, police department, were on the scene first. they had people running out of the building with, you know, large bullet holes in them in their chest and so forth. they did as best as they can to get those people out of the building and into our fire rescue unit as soon as possible. we had 12 people taken out of the scene from that building within ten minutes of arrival. the credit goes to all my first responders. they're amazing people. they're heroes. my fire chief ran towards the scene with shooting still going on to save children. the police department, all my fire department mettics, they did an amaze be job. >> you told me unfortunately there were some lives you couldn't save. >> about midway through, they brought out a young girl who had been shot several times. i took over the care with my medics. we hopped in the back of the ambulance. we tried everything we could. we did everything humanly possible to save that girl's life and we could not. it's devastating. >> you're a part of this community. you have kids here. this has to be -- how hard is it to go home and talk to your family and your kids about this? >> let me tell you, there's two families that i know personally who lost children yesterday. like you said, i have three children. and i tried speaking to my oldest boy today before i dropped him off at school. so i had that anxiety inside of me. and he looked at me with a blank stare. and almost helpless. and the fact that my children are raising -- being raised today in an environment where they're scared of going to school. my wife and i are scared of sending them to school. where have we come? and so i'm torn apart. i cried a lot. i'm crying for the families. who lost their loved ones. no one can ever understand what it feels like to have that happen to them. when it's someone's else's child, we will never know. we should never know. >> thank you so much for joining us. i'm so sorry for everything you saw. we appreciate everything you did out there. peter, as you heard, not only are there going to be a lot of physical injuries for those five people that are still in the hospital to overcome but a lot of emotional injuries not only for the people that were in that school shooting, but the first responders also out there and this entire community. peter. >> yes, i think you're right, he is a professional prepared, situations like he went through yesterday, you think about all the students in there who never imagined having to witness scenes like that in their own classrooms. i wanted to ask you about this next knew conference. about 30 minutes or so from now. what do we expect to hear from the local law enforcement officials then? >> right, two big things we're expecting to come out of it is a complete time line of exactly how everything went down. up until this point, we don't have a clear understanding of what went down during that hour when the shooter was in the school and when he fled the school and when he was able to slip away from the school passing himself off as a student before he was caught less than a mile away from the school. so that's one thing and also we're expecting to also get the names of all of these 17 people who died in the shooting. peter. >> all right, tammy, thank you very much for that report from on the ground in parkland. several law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation into yesterday's mass shooting at marjorie stone douglas high school tells nbc news the shooter purchased the guns legally at a gun store in broward county, florida. sources did not give the exact location of the gun business that sold the weapon that authorities say was used to kill 17 people, wounding 15 others, again, in the worst school shooting in that state's history. the gun store is federally licensed least according to sources. joining me now is our guest, a former psychologist with the secret service, currently the director of threat assessment at georgetown university. and bobby chicon, who is a retired special agent. maurice a, i want to start with you now. you have a lot of insight about the minds of mass shooters and others. are you surprise add weapon like this would have been purchased legally? >> so let's talk about what we know about scoot shootings generally. what we've seen is it was never that difficult for a school shooter to get access to a weapon or to multiple weapons. so most of them that we've studied across the country actually got their weapon from their own home or from a relative's home. even if those guns were secured with gun locks and gun safes. others purchased them legally or if they were underage they had an older friend purchase them legally too. the access is easy for a number of students. >> as you detail it, these generally, these shooters don't just snap, this is something they contemplate, they're even ambivalent, as you say, ahead of these events. walk us through it. because your insights are unique. >> this is a really important piece of all this. school shootings are preventable. we know this because we've studied these around the country for years. the reason they are preventable is because these shooters don't just snap. they plan it out. what's a critical piece of this is they don't keep these plans a secret. they tell other people. they tell them in person. they tell them on social media. they tell them in videos. >> when you hear that you can no longer accept that as oh, he was being crazy, this is their way of communicating, hey this could be real. >> when we talk to school shooters in prison, a number of them told us they put this information out there. they think in part because they wanted to be stopped. they wanted someone to stop them. part of them felt they had to carry out shooting. part of them didn't want to. when we work on active threat cases, is the part that kididn' want to. these are not students what we consider to be psychopaths or sociopaths. they're usually at a point of personal desperation and often suicidal at the point they feel like they have to resort to violence. >> bobby, i want to ask you about this. a youtube user who reportedly has the same name as the suspected florida gunman nikolas cruz had posted about his interest in being a school shooter. did it in a website on youtube attaching it to a different user's post there. this is what the agency said. today the fbi said they investigated but they were unable to identify the person, even though the user name was nikolas cruz although with a slightly different spelling as i understand it. i think it underscores just how difficult it is to identify people from their social media profiles. if you just find someone on the web, it's a lot more difficult than saying hey, this guy in my classroom's been talking like this. it's a lot easier to react. >> sure, like the doctor just said, in this case, we did have just that. we had his classmates saying he bullied me or threatened me. we had a social media where he was making threats and holding guns. the tragedy of this, with all due respect to the teachers who said the school did everything they could, they didn't. florida has the baker act. it says if a person is substantially likely to cause serious physical harm to another person, without treatment in a mental health facility, they can bring him in on an involuntary commitment. that should have been done. my niece is a school teacher in florida and she's done it. >> to be clear, bobby, just so i understand this properly this student had been expelled. is it still the school's responsibility? >> the school should have done it before expelling. school is saying we expelled him and that was our responsibility to get him out of here. what they did it kick the can down the road and made it someone else's problem. you don't just ignore it. the school is the would be that had the information. they had the information. it was incumbent upon them because they had the information. they should have brought this to the attention of authorities. though have baker acted this kid. he should have been brought in on a 72 hour hold. if they, like the doctor said, this was a case where they might have called out, said something to a doctor, that doctor can then petition a kid to hold him even longer in the facility and maybe get him to treatment he actually needs. i think the ball was dropped here. >> let me ask you the why here. why these school shooters act. why they resort to violence. you alluded to this a little bit. >> so in most of the cases, nearly all the cases we studied, the stood hooters we talked to prison, there was desperation for them. to you and i as an adult, they might not seem like a big loss but to that person felt overwhelming. so many of them have attempted suicide beforehand or considered suicide or just felt like life was hopeless. often they tried to solve their problems through other means, legitimate means and felt like those efforts failed and came to a realization they felt like they had no option left but to engage in violence. now what we saw is multiple motives. for some of them, they want notoriety. they want the media coverage. >> there's going to be a lot of parents watching us right now. they're trying to figure out how to talk to their own children about this as they send their own kids off to classrooms today, tomorrow, the next day with these fears. in simple terms, the message you would deliver to them to try to get their children tools to help protect themselves and their classmates is what? >> so the message parents can give their kids right now, age appropriate, is you are a critical piece of keeping your school safe. because you might be the first person to know that a friend is having a problem. to hear something that raises some concern, to hear about this desperate, if you learn about it, get it to an adult. tell me as a parent. get to law enforcement. let someone know who can take some action on this. >> thank you so much. it's so nice to speak to you. bobby, thank you very much as well. appreciate it. >> thank you, peter. >> we are watching parkland, florida, closely, for the next update from authorities that could start in the next hour. we'll take you there live. as soon as that gets under way. we're also watching a courtroom where the suspected shooter's arraignment is expected to start within the hour as well. >> i took a book. it was a tiny book. i held it up. i believe maybe the book kind of deterred some of the bullets. so it didn't hit me so badly. you were made to move. to progress. to not just accept what you see, but imagine something new. at invisalign®, we use the most advanced teeth straightening technology to help you find the next amazing version of yourself. it's time to unleash your secret weapon. it's there, right under your nose. get to your best smile up to 50% faster. visit invisalign.com to get started today. back now with this breaking news coverage on msnbc as the parkland community mourns for those lives lost in yesterday's awful tragedy. one of victims is an assistant football coach aaron feis. he was said to have shielded students from the shooter's bullets. a student spoke out about him just moments ago. >> the coach is an american hero. he died saving his students. he died saving us. without him, some kids wouldn't even be able to go hug their parents last night. he is a hero. >> the football team tweeting about him as well. a tweet now retreated 70,000 times. liked 188,000 times. as americans are looking to celebrate the awfulness of these moments. americans are demanding answers from lawmakers as well. how to keep these tragedies from happening again and again. >> the nra has become so powerful around here that, again, congress will not lead. >> we cannot tolerate a society and live in a country with any level of pride when our babies are being slaughtered. >> i'm not going to vote to ban ar-15 but i will vote to ban bump stocks and i will vote to make sure you're on the terrorist watch list, you can't buy a gun. >> we have not done a very good job of making sure people who have mental reasons for not being able to handle a gun getting their name into the fbi files. >> doing nothing is not the answer. there will just be more. >> we're in agreement that doing nothing is not the answer. will they do anything going forward? msnbc capitol hill correspondent garrett haake is joining me now. this seems sadly so familiar to hear these sound bites from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle frankly praying for the victims but americans want to know not just that we need to do something but that they are actively doing something. is there any crack, is there any sense that something could happen this time? >> not today, peter, not tomorrow and not next week when both houses of congress are scheduled to be on recess. you listen to those sound bites and most of them could be used at any one of these inflection points after the mass shootings we've seen. congress has two real problems when it comes to dealing with issues. the first is getting started and the second is staying consistently engaged on this issue. senator murphy from connecticut has been one of the most outspoken gun control advocates in the congress. addressed this problem of how to get started on this conversation earlier today. >> you said the idea on days when there's school shootings, i can't talk about the need for change is ridiculous. there have been 19 school shootings already in this country this year. >> that's the political debate, how these conversations start. the problem about sustaining momentum is a real one. if you think about the last couple of shootings we have had of this nature, there was a push to expand background checks after newtown. that ill fae ethat failed. there was a push to ban bump stocks. that went nowhere. there was a push to improve the national background check system. that passed in the house. coupled with a bill that would expand concealed carry, so far it has gone nowhere in the senate. so the ability to maintain the level of outrage we've heard from lawmakers today and translate into a new policy is where this has been lacking. >> we're going to keep watching. and hopefully americans will keep pushing for some action on this that americans of all stripes agree on, something has to be done. garrett, thank you. coming e ing up, heading to cou expect the shooting suspect to be in court in the next hour facing 17 counts of premeditated murder. what he faces when he gets there and authorities say content they found on his social media. and at our factory in boston, more than a thousand workers are starting their day building on over a hundred years of heritage, craftsmanship and innovation. today we're bringing you america's number one shave at lower prices every day. putting money back in the pockets of millions of americans. as one of those workers, i'm proud to bring you gillette quality for less, because nobody can beat the men and women of gillette. gillette - the best a man can get. tripadvisor compares prices from over 200 booking sites to time to bask... in low prices! find the right hotel for you at the lowest price. refreshing, isn't it?. tripadvisor. but their nutritional needs remain instinctual. that's why there's purina one true instinct. real meat #1. a different breed of natural nutrition. purina one true instinct. now, try new purina one true instinct treats. just a few minutes from now, we will be taking to that courtroom in south florida as we expect to see the suspected shooter there. before the judge before the arraignme arraignment. for several terrifying hours yesterday, parents of course waited in agony for their children to eamerican from the school. now broward county has started a go fund me page to raise money for the victims. so far, they've raised nearly $235,000 i believe it is. look at that. i'm joined by one parent, a mother whose daughter was thankfully able to escape from the school unharmed. first of all, let me say how glad i am that your daughter alexandria is safe. most importantly, how are you and how is she doing today? >> she's emotionally drained. it was a really rough day yesterday. something we never thought we'd experience. when i left she was actually still sleeping. it was just emotional. it's not something you actually expect is going to happen to your family, to your town. it's -- it was a really, really, really rough day. we're blessed that she made it out okay. >> no doubt. i think that's for certain. can you take us back to how things unfolded for you and for your daughter? i understand that she first alerted you about the shooting while she was hiding inside a classroom. you were in touch with her until her phone died. can you even detail what that feels like in a mom's heart in those moments? >> it was horrible. yes, the first text came in. unfortunately, i missed the text. i didn't have my phone on me. my husband who was home at the time received the text message. it must have been around 2:30 or so. the text message said there's a shooter at our school. i'm hiding. and so he answered her back. he told her to stay calm. he called out my name and when i went to the -- to see him, he showed me his phone and i saw the message, called the school. once confirmed it was true, he took off immediately in his car. he went to drive through the school. that's when i saw her messages, mommy, there's a shooter in the school, i'm hiding. i'm terrified. please call the police. she could hear someone who was crying out for help. she said there was a spanish speaking student who she could hear was crying, praying out loud. he had been shot. she was on the third floor. so i was asking her specifically where she was at so i could give that information out. again, she just kept saying she was fine but for me to please call the police. i said hang up. i love you. everything's going to be fine, i promise. and i called 911 and i reported what she told me. and that was the last i heard for about 20, 30 minutes and those were the most horrifying 20, 30 minutes of my life. once she finally called -- >> i was going to say, i can only imagine what that was like and what it was like for you finally to wrap your arms around her. i know you wrote on your facebook page, it sort of struck me, i want to read part of it for our audience. you said in the big picture, the perpetrator here is irrelevant. until change happens to fix the rampant violence in our country, the time to take action is now. what should that look like? >> absolutely. i believe politicians. all the politicians are going to come out right now. if you see the city, it's mayhem between the cops and politicians and probably the president who's going to fly in and give us words of condolences which are irrelevant and empty at this point because the action that needs to take place in my opinion, the nra. we have our, you know, our politicians like marco like marco rubio who has taken money from the nra. there's no doubt about that. he is a parent, and i don't understand. i heard jared moskowitz say why don't they act like parents instead of politicians? it's a sad state we're living in when money comes first. insure there's going to be people with mental health issues and there's going to be a terrorist, et cetera. but if we don't get the guns of the streets, nothing will change no matter who the mental patient is. obviously we need to address the mental health, but there's no reason why a sircivilian should have an ar-15. i'm going to try to do something to make a change. our community is strong, tite-knit and we're going to get together to make a change. >> we are incredibly grateful for your passion. >> i appreciate you having me on. thank you. just a few minutes from now we'll expect the florida school shooting suspect to be in court. it's 19-year-old nikolas cruz facing those 19 counts of premeditated murder. tom costello has been digging into his background. what do we know about him? >> it appears for the last year and 18 months to two years he had been living kind of a troubled life. we know that his father died six years ago. his mother died back in november. he had been living with a family of a friend. they say they were unaware of mental illness. students said he talked a lot about guns, that he was almost an outcast at times, socially awkward and he also talked about violence and hurt or killing animals so that all is part of this broader discussion, as you know, about the school having excelled him last year because he was seen as a threat. some teachers are saying he threatened other students. peter, as you know, all these come together. as you look at his alleged posting on youtube and he said sa he wanted to become a school shooter. our questions right now are whierpwhy did that investigation not go any further. they were not able to get a particular location where it might occur and they weren't able to identify if mr. cruz was the one who post ed the video. but the posting was from a nikolas cruz, different spelling. we go into this hearing where he will appear before the magistrate with 12 counts of premeditated murder. uber is confirming that one of its drives did, in fact, take him to the high school yesterday afternoon just as school was preparing to let out. >> tom costello, we appreciate that update. they knew name nikolas cruz but it was still a challenge for law enforcement but a question we're going to be posing over the course of this day. joining me is ann mill graham. as well as legal analyst danny cevallos. as we tee up to rararraignment take place, give a sense of what we should be looking for in this hearing. >> this will blielk a short hearing. it's very standard procedure. it will be the first time that cruz will be front of a judge where he will plead guilty or innocent to the crime scenes. we expect he will plead not guilty at this point and the question will then be bail. in florida, the penalty would be either life in prison or the death penalty depending on what the prosecutor sought given there's no question that cruz will be remanded and stay in jail as the case goes forward. and then the case will go forward to a grand jury to diet. >> weighed conversation with a former law enforcement official who said the school bears some responsibility here, they shouldn't just excel a student, but the baker act in florida. a lot of people i suspect would say what more can the school do? >> the verb is being baker acts which deals with inn voluntary commitment. you don't want to infringe on that without a decent amount of suspicion that someone is suffering from mental illness or they pose a threat to themselves or others. if they can make that showing, they can potentially baker act somebody or have them involuntarily committed. >> let me ask you about social media. we're talking about this man's profile, the fact he had posted on a youtube page and turns out apparently in the past we're seeing pictures from his own social media profile. how will prosecutors try to use that as evidence in the case they present today and going forward? >> all the social media posts will be part of the evidence in the case. they'll look for everything he posted, comments he made on other people's social media accounts. really, it's important to note there's not a single case in america today that goes forward without some form of digital evidence. >> walk us through this again if florida there are laws that are different in that state than they are in your state. there's some that we should be paying attention to as we prepare for this hearing? >> this is a murder case. yes, some state laws vary, but this will be very much what people have seen and understand to be a murder case. the possess physicianty was that it was premeditated. what goes into that is things like planning, walk into a school with a gas mask, grenades a number of magazines and an assault rifle. that's basically this case. i don't want to say it's not complicated but it's going to be exactly what most people would think about when they think about a murder case, the government has to prove he intentional killed these people. from what we're seeing reported, that's the evidence left lane come into play. >> we're grateful for your expertise on this. thank you very much. danny, i'll ask you to stay with us as we prepare to hear this hearing. the arraignment beginning a short term from now. these are 17 charges of premeditated murder. obviously a big conversation right now about mental health. we've talked about this before. but i want to drill down on it. the idea that there could be an insanity plea. what happens? >> likely at the first appearance the only thing we're going to hear is guilty or not guilty. i'm telling you you now 99.9% chance he's going to plead not guilty. you're essentially admitting to the facts that, hey, i did it but here's additional facts and that is that i lack the mental ability to understand or appreciate the wrongfulness of what i did. remember, the test for wrongfulness is not whether or not you personally believe what you were doing was right or wrong because any person who commits a horrible crime thinks what they're doing is righteous. it's whether you're aware of what society deemed to be wrong, and that can be evidenced by flight, hiding evidence. you have that here. you have him trying to evade capture. insanity with the presumption of insanity will be an uphill battle. >> we're moments away from seeing this suspect in court. we know the president will be there tomorrow. you heard from the attorney general earlier today saying we need to do more to help prevent school shootings like this. is there anything else that needs to be on the books in terms of the prosecution that would help? they just called his name in the courtroom right now. let me ask our producers. we're going to go right now to parkland florida in the courtroom and take a listen. again we're looking at that courtroom in south florida where we expect moments from now to see 19-year-old nikolas cruz, the young man believed responsible, suspected of that deadly shooting taking place not even 24 hours ago now. this will be his arraignment. danny i'll ask you to stay with us as we wait to see him forfeit right now. what will the judge, the magistrate first do when they begin? >> it's pretty amazing. i'm watching this feed and the video arraignment itself is a relatively new phenomenon as you can imagine. but the fact we're allowed to see it, florida allows video in courts to go out to news. here we go. >> he's walking in. you see him in the orange jumpsuit. let's listen. >> mr. cruz. okay. thank you. are you nicholas jacob cruz? >>, yes, ma'am. >> okay you are charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. i have something very important to tell you. you're charged with some very serious crimes. you have the rrs right to remain silent. if you give up that during this hearing whatever you say can and will be used against you in the prosecution of this case. state, how would you like to pr proceed today. are you seeking no bond and a presumption break? >> yes, your honor. >> you may proceed. >> your honor, the state is

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