Jurors also watched video of Cruz calmly ordering a cherry and blue raspberry Icee minutes after the shooting and, nine months later, attacking a jail guard.Ĭruz’s half-sister, Danielle Woodard, nearly 12 years older, was brought to the courtroom from a Miami-Dade County jail where she is awaiting trial on a carjacking charge. Prosecutors also presented graphic surveillance videos gruesome crime scene and autopsy photos his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle emotional testimony from teachers and students who saw others die and four days of tearful, angry statements from parents, spouses and other family members about how their loved one’s death affected them. Jurors saw dried blood on floors and walls, bullet holes in doors and windows and remnants of Valentine’s Day cards and balloons. The defense is seeking to overcome horrendous evidence laid out by lead prosecutor Mike Satz and his team, capped by the jurors’ visit to the fenced-off building that Cruz stalked, firing about 150 shots down halls and into classrooms. For Cruz to be sentenced to death, the jury must be unanimous - if even one juror votes for life, that will be his sentence. McNeill deferred her opening statement from the trial’s first day of July 18 to the beginning of her team’s case. But she hopes jurors will remember that the law “never requires you to vote for death,” not even “in the worst case imaginable, and it’s arguable that this is the worst case imaginable.” "You didn’t see him laughing or happy," she said.“Everyone knows there is one person responsible for all that pain and all of that suffering, and that person is Nikolas Cruz,” she said. That, of course, separated him even further from his peers. She said that when he would get frustrated, he would turn violent, hitting other students and tearing up their assignments and projects. "He didn’t blend in well with the other students. "Nikolas was very quiet, aloof," she said. He had been assigned to special education since kindergarten after being diagnosed with emotional and developmental problems and a speech disability. "He couldn’t stand up for himself," Rodriguez said. Lynn Rodriguez said that when she taught Cruz in 20, he had difficulty staying on task and was "very small" for his age, leading to him being bullied at school, on the bus and by his younger brother at home. Lynda Cruz died of pneumonia four months before the shootings.īefore Browd’s testimony was played, his third and fourth grade special education teacher testified that he was a sad and sometimes violent and disruptive student who didn’t make friends with his classmates. So after three weeks, Lynda Cruz traded in the BMW for another van, Browd said. For example, Lynda and Roger Cruz traded in the family’s van for a BMW SUV when their oldest son was 4, but he didn’t like it because he couldn’t stand up and move like he could in the van. She said his mother didn’t set boundaries for him. He would stand there for a few hours and do this." "He would stand at the window screaming and crying and I would have to yell at him to get away from the window," Browd said. She said Cruz would have severe separation anxiety whenever his mother would leave him with her to run errands. She said that most children will stop if spoken to with a stern voice, but "he wouldn’t." He would lay down and scream and cry, but not like a normal kid," Browd said. "She was a great mom."īut by the time Nikolas Cruz was 4, he was throwing tantrums that went beyond what children normally have, she said. "She was ecstatic, overjoyed," Browd said. Parkland school shooter trial: Jurors see video of Nikolas Cruz's 'cold, calculated and cruel' rampageīrowd said Lynda Cruz was a doting mother when she brought Nikolas home.Parkland shooter trial: Officers describe horror they saw after massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas.She said Lynda Cruz had dreamed of being a mother so went through a private attorney to adopt Nikolas and, two years, later his half-brother Zachary. She said Lynda Cruz had four miscarriages before she was able to adopt Nikolas in 1998 when she was 49 and her husband 61. She and Lynda Cruz became best friends while working at a New York insurance company in the 1980s, with they and their husbands moving to Florida at approximately the same time so they could remain near each other. His public defenders played video recorded testimony of Browd, who has health issues that prevented her from coming to court. Trying to overcome the emotional, gruesome and graphic evidence and testimony the prosecution presented over three weeks as it laid out the killings, the defense has spent the first five days of its case trying to show that from the time he was conceived in the womb of a crack-smoking, hard-drinking prostitute he was put on a road that created a killer.
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