Kansas mass shooter Cedric Larry Ford left Florida sometime after 2005 with four felony convictions that would have made it illegal for him to possess firearms.
The convictions all stem from a night of car burglaries, theft and a high-speed police chase on the night of May 4, 2000 in Broward County, according to court records obtained exclusively by NBC 6.
After a Pembroke Pines resident who spotted him and a co-defendant breaking into cars called 911, Pembroke Pines police spotted the car Ford was driving and tried to pull it over, police said.
Ford, then 22 and unemployed, fled at high speed from Pembroke Pines police, his car carrying two co-defendants and the booty of what he would later admit was a series of car burglaries in nearby Davie.
He admitted breaking into the two cars he was seen entering in Pembroke Pines. He pled no contest to two felony burglary counts and fleeing police, was found guilty and sentenced to three years' probation. In 2003, he violated probation by not paying fees and failing to make monthly reports, according to an affidavit filed by his probation officer. He was arrested on that probation violation in 2004 and sentenced to four months jail on Nov. 30, 2004.
That sentence was concurrent to three years' probation received after pleading no contest to charges of burglarizing a car in Davie earlier that night and grand theft of a stereo from inside that car.
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The connection between the chase and fruitless burglaries in Pembroke Pines and the Davie burglary and grand theft was made after Pembroke Pines alerted Davie police to Ford admitting cellphones, stereos and other electronics found in his car was from burglaries in Davie.
He also violated that probation and was sentenced to four months in jail for probation violation on these counts, concurrent with the Pembroke Pines case.
Authorities said Ford killed three people and injured 14 during a shooting in Kansas Thursday evening. He was shot and killed by a responding officer.
