Photos: Nikolas Cruz, 19 y.o beast who massacred 17 people at #FloridaHighSchool about to appear in court

The teen gunman who shot and killed 17 people at a Florida high school on Wednesday is set to appear in court for the first time at 2pm to be arraigned on 17 counts of premeditated murder - charges that carry the possibility of the death penalty.

Nikolas Cruz, 19, was arrested shortly after the shooting Valentine's Day afternoon, and was initially taken to the hospital to be treated for 'labored breathing'. He was soon released to the police who spent most of the night questioning Cruz, trying to make sense of the horrific school shooting - now the third deadliest in American history. The fact that it was the 30th mass shooting so far this year has spurred activists to call on Congress again to revamp the nation's gun control policies. President Trump, a staunch defender of the National Rifle Association, said at a press conference on Thursday that the real issue lawmakers need to tackle is mental health, not guns.

Meanwhile, details are starting to emerge about the shooter, who recently was orphaned, stopped getting mental health treatment about a year ago and even had ties to a white supremacist group. Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School painted the picture of a weird and disturbed teen who sold knives out of a lunchbox, bragged about killing animals and was finally kicked out of school for fighting and carrying bullets in his backpack. An FBI official also said Thursday that they were warned - not once, but twice - about the shooter. One of the warnings came in September, from a bail bondsman in Mississippi who alerted the feds about an alarming online message Cruz wrote saying he was 'going to be a professional school shooter'.