Law-Enforcement Officials Say YouTube Tip on Florida Shooter Wasn’t a Strong Lead
Agency investigated a video comment by user with same name as Florida shooting suspect; experts say comment didn’t have enough details to warrant aggressive probe

Current and former law-enforcement officials said it wasn’t clear what further action the FBI could have taken after agents were notified of a threatening comment left on YouTube last year by a user with the same name as the 19-year-old charged with killing 17 people Wednesday at a Florida high school.
A user by the name of “nikolas cruz” in September posted a comment on a Mississippi bail bondsman’s video blog, saying, “Im going to be a professional school shooter.”
The video blogger, Ben Bennight, was concerned enough about the comment that he reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to alert them. Within days, agents visited Mr. Bennight and appeared to be taking his tip seriously, he said in an interview.
Mr. Bennight and others have noted that the commenter’s YouTube moniker was the same as Nikolas Cruz, the teen charged in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Law enforcement officials couldn’t confirm that it was Mr. Cruz who made the comment.
“I wish the information could have prevented something like this from happening,” Mr. Bennight said in a new YouTube video, posted after the shooting.
Current and former agents said the FBI faces limits under Justice Department rules in seeking to aggressively pursue such tips. They also must weigh how much time, effort and resources to put into a vague threat that is similar to thousands of others that flood into the bureau each year.
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The FBI confirmed it received Mr. Bennight’s tip, but said it didn’t have sufficient information to pursue matters much further. “No other information was included in the comment which would indicate a particular time, location, or the true identity of the person who posted the comment,” the bureau said in a statement. “The FBI conducted database reviews and other checks, but was unable to further identify the person who posted the comment.”
The FBI conducted internal database reviews and open-source checks, said Robert Lasky, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami division. But the agency found no additional information to identify the person who posted the comment, and found no connection to South Florida, Mr. Lasky said.
The FBI is permitted to take only basic investigative steps after receiving such a lead, especially when it contains no specific information about weapons, planning, timing or target, experts said.
Under Justice Department guidelines, agents can run the suspect’s information, or username, through public records and bureau databases. They can also check a national database of criminal records. If they get a lead, they can take further investigative measures, such as conducting surveillance.
Agents could theoretically have sought to persuade a federal prosecutor to issue a grand jury subpoena to YouTube for information on the user, experts said.
But they added that said there didn’t appear to be anything in the threat that would have justified such a time-consuming action, which may or may not have netted useful information. If the FBI and Justice Department took such action in every similar situation, they would be doing little else, former agents and prosecutors said.
“The volume of such leads is high—and no, we don’t seek subpoenas and serve subpoenas on providers in every case,” said Dave Johnson, a former top FBI official. “It just is not realistic and reasonable. It’s just the overwhelming volume of tips. And resources.”
James McJunkin, a former high-ranking bureau official, said it “is hard to take a lead like that anywhere.”
“It’s vague and uncorroborated,” he said. “There is no overt threat. This was a judgment call.”
—Arian Campo-Flores contributed to this article.
Write to Del Quentin Wilber at del.wilber@wsj.com and Jon Kamp at jon.kamp@wsj.com