Graphic video of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz murdering 17 people as he stalked through high school is played in court for jurors who ‘started squirming’ and ‘held their hands over their faces’
- The jurors who will decide whether Nikolas Cruz will get the death penalty watched graphic video footage of the shooting at a Parkland, Florida high school
- The video, compiled from 13 security cameras inside the building, purportedly shows Cruz shooting the victims at point-blank range, sometimes several times
- Jurors who watched the video raised their hands to their mouth, and one started trembling as the events unfolded
- They also heard testimony from students and teachers at the school that day
- The video came after the jury saw cellphone footage from the massacre on Monday, the first day of Cruz’s trial
The jurors who will decide whether school shooter Nikolas Cruz will get the death penalty watched graphic video footage of the moment he killed 14 students and three teachers in 2018.
The video, compiled from 13 security cameras inside the building, is not being shown to the public, but purportedly shows Cruz stalking through the halls of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018 and shooting 17 people at point-blank range.
It also apparently shows Cruz, now 23, going back to some of his victims to kill them with a second volley of shots.
As they watched the 15-minute recording, which has no sound, the 12 jurors and 10 alternates stared intently at their video screens.
Two women raised their hands to their mouth, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports, and one began slightly trembling.
Later, four other jurors held their hands to their faces.
One juror even looked at the screen, looked up at Cruz with his eyes wide and then returned to the video.
Cruz looked down while the video played and did not appear to watch it. He sometimes looked up to exchange whispers with one of his attorneys.
Surveillance video captured Nikolas Cruz stalking the hallways of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida with an AR-15 on February 14, 2018, aged 19. On Tuesday, jurors saw the surveillance footage from the shooting
As jurors watched footage from the shooting, Cruz looked down, sometimes whispering to his defense attorneys
Jurors are now set to decide whether Cruz, now 23, should face the death penalty or be sentenced to life in prison for the school shooting
The video was played over the objection of Cruz’s attorneys, who argued that any evidentiary value it has is outweighed by the emotions it would raise in the jurors. They argued that witness statements of what happened would be sufficient.
But prosecutor Jeff Marcus argued that the videos are needed to prove the ‘heinous, atrocious and cruel’ nature of the killings.
Eventually, Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Scherer ruled in favor of the prosecution, saying a video that accurately reflects Cruz’s crimes does not unfairly prejudice his case.
Prosecutors are using the video to prove several aggravating factors, including that Cruz acted in a cold, calculated and cruel manner.
During the shooting, Cruz fired 139 rounds before abandoning his rifle and blending in with other students.
He has already pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of first-degree murder, and 17 more counts of attempted murder for those he wounded.
The jury must now decide if he should be sentenced to death or life without parole for the nation’s deadliest mass shooting to go before a jury.
Christopher McKenna, a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, positively identified Cruz as the man in the surveillance footage the jurors watched
Later during the second day of the trial, jurors heard testimony from Christopher McKenna, who positively identified Cruz as the man in the surveillance footage.
McKenna was a freshman during the February 14, 2018 shooting.
He had left his English class to go to the bathroom and exchanged greetings with two students, Luke Hoyer and Martin Duque, as they crossed paths in the first-floor hallway. McKenna then entered a stairwell and encountered Cruz assembling his AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.
Cruz, who had been expelled from Stoneman Douglas a year earlier, had come onto campus through a gate that had been opened for the nearing end of the school day carrying the gun in a bag.
‘He said get out of here. Things are about to get bad,’ McKenna recalled.
McKenna sprinted to the parking lot as Cruz went into the hallway and began shooting. McKenna alerted Aaron Feis, an assistant football coach who doubled as a security guard.
Feis drove McKenna in his golf cart to an adjacent building for safety, and then went to the three-story building McKenna fled from.
By then, the sounds of gunfire were already ringing out across the campus. Feis went in and was fatally shot immediately by Cruz, who had already killed Hoyer, 15, and Duque, 14, and eight others.
Cruz then continued through the second floor, where he fired into classrooms but hit no one. When he reached the third-floor, he killed six more.
Students walked in a straight line outside the school on February 14, 2018
Some students evacuated the school oblivious of the active shooting incident in one of the three-story buildings. Cruz fired 139 rounds before abandoning his rifle and blending in with other students
The jurors also heard testimony from English teacher Dara Hass, who had three students killed and several wounded in her classroom when Cruz fired through a window in the door.
‘The sound was so loud. The students were screaming,’ said Hass, who wept and dabbed her eyes with tissue as she testified.
She thought it might be a drill, but then she spotted the body of 14-year-old Alex Schachter, who had been fatally shot at his desk.
One of her students in the class that day, Alex Dworet, also recounted that moment.
‘While I was sitting there I was trying not to think this is real. This is fake. I’m trying not to freak out,’ he said.
But when he saw Schacter slumped in his seat with blood collecting under him as he spasmed and twitched, ‘It was starting to get real.’
Another student, William Olsen, testified that as he saw Schachter was not moving, ‘I realize there’s blood all over me.
‘I can hear the shots still,’ he recounted. ‘I hear them get farther away.
‘I ended up on the floor in front of the teacher’s desk. I don’t know how I got there.’
He and other students scrambled away from the window, using Hass’ desk as a barrier.
Two 14-year-old girls also died in the classroom: Alaina Petty and Alyssa Alhadeff.
By the time police arrived and evacuated her students, Hass said she did not want to leave but officers convinced her.
‘I wanted to stay with the students who couldn’t go,’ she said, referring to Schachter, Petty and Alhadeff. When prosecutor Mike Satz showed her photos of their bodies in her classroom, she sobbed.
In the end, 14 students and three teachers were killed in the largest school massacre ever to go to trial.
Among the victims was Dworet’s 17-year-old brother, Nick, who was across the hall from him in his Holocaust studies class.
Cruz fired into that classroom, too, killing him.
Alex Dworet recounted how one of his fellow students started spasming after being shot
Fred and Jennifer Gutenberg, the parents of victim Jamie Gutenberg, listened intently to the testimony at the Broward County Courthouse on Tuesday
The testimonies and video came just one day after jurors – as well as those in the courtroom – heard the screams of Cruz’s victims from a video recorded by students.
Lead prosecutor, Michael J. Satz, played a video for the jurors and Dylan Kreamer, who was a junior at the time of the Valentine’s Day massacre, of the moments shots were fired inside the classroom.
‘I looked over and two people were dead, and multiple people were shot,’ Kraemer said while recalling peaking out the window to see Cruz with his AR-15.
Only prosecutors and jurors could view the images, but the audio was heard throughout the courtroom.
Audio of loud gunshots and people screaming rang out before someone in the gallery shouted, ‘shut it off!’
Danielle Gilbert, also a junior at the time of the shooting, was in her AP Psychology class when the gun shots were heard. Gilbert took the stand on Monday to explain the tragic event.
‘We dropped toward the ground and started running toward the window,’ Gilbert said.
Gilbert instantly recorded the scene in her classroom, that was then played for jurors. Screams of students were heard echoing inside the courtroom as gunshots can be heard flying through the hallway window of the classroom.
‘This can’t be real,’ a student can be heard saying as another shouted for help.
Audience members, many of them family of the deceased, clutched tissues and held onto each other as others ran out of the courtroom at the sound of the screams.
Meanwhile, Brittany Sinitch, a teacher at the high school, said her students were in the midst of a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ lesson and were writing Valentine’s Day Cards as characters when suddenly loud bangs were heard.
‘We were having so much fun until I heard what I described as just the loudest noise you could possibly imagine,’ Sinitch said.
She immediately turned off the lights and ordered her students to hide as she called the police.
‘They couldn’t hear me over the sound because it was so loud,’ Sinitch said.
Executive Director of Safe Schools for Alex Max Schachter (right), whose son Alex was one of the Parkland school shooting victims, was present in court for the first day of Cruz’s penalty phase of trial
Some members of the gallery left the court room as audio of the horrific event was played
Satz, the lead prosecutor, recalled the Valentine’s Day massacre in detail as the family of victims sat in audience wiping away their tears.
‘I’m going to speak to you about the unspeakable about this defendant’s goal-directed plan, systematic murder, mass murder of 14 children, an athletic director, a teacher and a coach,’ Satz said to the jurors in Broward County, Florida.
He then described how Cruz killed each and every victim, as depicted in the 15-minute video, and emphasized that most of the victims were shot between four to six times, with one of the last victims, Peter Wang, being shot 13 times on the third floor.
‘The murders were cold, calculated, and premeditated,’ Satz said.
Cruz sat on the defense table with his head in his hands Monday as the audio played
But defense attorneys are likely to portray Cruz as a teenager with psychological problems who has suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and abuse.
At the time of the shooting, Cruz was a 19-year-old expelled student with a history of mental health and behavioral issues at the time of the ‘premeditated’ killings, the Broward State’s Attorney Office said in court documents.
He had previously attended the school and had been expelled during the 2016-17 school year.
Cruz was 18 when he legally purchased the semiautomatic AR-15 rifle. On the day of the shooting in 2018, he ordered an Uber to drop him off at the school along with his rifle that was concealed in a black case.
He entered the building with the AR-15 and multiple magazines, just before classes ended for the day.
During his plea hearing last month, Cruz blamed pot for the massacre an apologized to victims’ families, saying: ‘The US would do better if everyone stopped smoking marijuana’.
‘I hate drugs and I believe this country would do better if everyone would stop smoking marijuana and doing all these drugs and causing racism and violence out in the streets,’ he added.
Cruz has previously admitted to using a lot of marijuana and had taken a lot of a prescription tranquilizer.
Assistant State Attorney Mike Satz described the Valentine’s Day massacre in detail on Monday, recounting each of the 14 students and three teachers died that day
The Parkland school massacre is the deadliest school shooting to reach trial in U.S. history. Other mass shooters have either killed themselves after following out their plan or been killed by police gunfire.
When the jury eventually gets the case this fall, it will vote 17 times on the question of whether to recommend the death penalty: once for each of the victims.
Every vote must be unanimous; a nonunanimous vote for any one of the victims means Cruz’s sentence for that person would be life in prison. The jurors are told that to vote for the death penalty, the aggravating circumstances the prosecution has presented for the victim in question must, in their judgment, “outweigh” mitigating factors presented by the defense.
Regardless of the evidence, any juror can vote for life in prison out of mercy. During jury selection, the panelists said under oath that they are capable of voting for either sentence.
The Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
On February 14, 2018, when then-19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, 17 people were killed, including three teachers. Another 17 were injured.
Alyssa Alhadeff, 14
Alyssa was a soccer player for Parkland Travel Soccer
Scott Beigel, 35
Biegel was a geography teacher who was killed as he tried to direct students back to his classroom when the shooting broke out
Martin Duque Anguiano, 14
Martin’s brother Miguel wrote on a GoFundMe page for his brother’s funeral expenses: ‘He was a very funny kid, outgoing, and sometimes really quiet’
(L-R) Alyssa Alhadeff, 14; Scott Beigel, 35; Martin Duque Anguiano, 14
Nicholas Dworet, 17
Nicholas was a senior when he was killed. He had already been recruited onto the swim team at the University of Indianapolis
Aaron Feis, 37
Feis was shot and killed after throwing himself in front of students to protect them from bullets. He died from his gunshot wounds after being rushed to the hospital and undergoing emergency surgery
Jamie Guttenberg, 14
Jamie’s father confirmed her death in a Facebook post that read: ‘My heart is broken. Yesterday, Jennifer Bloom Guttenberg and I lost our baby girl to a violent shooting at her school…I write this trying to figure out how my family gets through this’
(L-R) Nicholas Dworet, 17; Aaron Feis, 37; Jamie Guttenberg, 14
Chris Hixon, 49
Hixon was the school’s athletic director and his wife told CNN that he was ‘an awesome husband, father and American’. Hixon was a Naval reservist and did a tour in Iraq in 2007
Luke Hoyer, 15
Luke’s cousin told the local news station that he was ‘an amazing individual. Always happy, always smiling. His smile was contagious, and so was his laugh’
Cara Loughran, 14
Cara was an Irish dancer at a local dance studio, which posted on Facebook: ‘Cara was a beautiful soul and always had a smile on her face’
(L-R) Chris Hixon, 49; Luke Hoyer, 15; Cara Loughran, 14
Gina Montalto, 14
Gina was a member of the school’s marching band as a winter guard. Her instructor said she ‘was the sweetest soul ever’
Joaquin Oliver, 17
Joaquin was born in Venezuela and moved to the US when he was three. He became a natural citizen one year before the shooting
Alaina Petty, 14
Alaina was part of the school’s junior ROTC program – a leadership program taught by Army veterans
(L-R) Gina Montalto, 14; Joaquin Oliver, 17; Alaina Petty, 14
Meadow Pollack, 18
Meadow was a senior and had been accepted to Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, at the time of her death
Helena Ramsay, 17
Helena was planning to attend college in 2019. Her cousin wrote in a tribute: ‘We miss you dearly and are so incredibly sorry that your life was cut short’
Alex Schachter, 14
Alex was a member of the high school’s marching band and orchestra where he played baritone and trombone. After his death his family set up a GoFundMe page to act as a scholarship fund in his memory
(L-R) Meadow Pollack, 18; Helena Ramsay, 17; Alex Schachter, 14
Carmen Schentrup, 16
Carmen was a National Merit Scholar semifinalist, which only 10 students had qualified for in 2018
Peter Wang, 15
Peter was a member of the school’s junior ROTC program and was reportedly looking forward to the Chinese New Year, which was two days after the massacre
(L-R) Carmen Schentrup, 16; Peter Wang, 15
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