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Tag: Parkland

  • Florida House again moves to allow teens to purchase guns

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    The Florida House is again moving to pass a controversial bill that would lower the minimum age to purchase rifles and other long guns from 21 to 18, though the Senate has not given any public sign that it is on board.

    The Republican-controlled House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on Tuesday voted 11-5 along party lines to approve the bill (HB 133), which now only needs to clear the House Judiciary Committee before it could go to the full House during the 2026 legislative session.

    The bill would reverse a decision made by the Legislature and then-Gov. Rick Scott to increase the minimum gun-purchase age after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Nikolas Cruz, then 19, used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 17 people at the school.

    The House passed bills in 2023, 2024 and 2025 to lower the minimum age to 18, but the Senate did not go along. A Senate bill on the issue has not been filed for the 2026 session, which will start Jan. 13.

    House Majority Leader Tyler Sirois, a Merritt Island Republican who is sponsoring the House bill, told subcommittee members that there is “still time for that conversation” with the Senate, where bills can be filed until the start of the session. Sirois declined to comment on the bill after the meeting.

    Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, hasn’t publicly taken a stance on the issue. But such a bill would have to go through the Rules Committee, where Chairwoman Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, has said she isn’t going to repeal the 2018 legislation.

    The National Rifle Association has challenged the constitutionality of the higher gun-purchasing age. The group lost in federal district and appellate courts and has an appeal pending at the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Rep. Robin Bartleman, D-Weston, told lawmakers Tuesday that each time the bill is introduced it “reopens wounds” for Parkland survivors.

    “Every year, that wound is healing and you rip it off. And I don’t really understand why when you know there’s not a Senate companion (bill),” said Bartleman, who was on the Broward County School Board in 2018.

    “We were there the night of the shooting,” Bartleman added. “We went to the funerals. We dealt with the aftermath. But you continue to bring this up time and time again. And it just causes so much pain for these families.”

    Rep. Mike Gottlieb, D-Davie, described teens as “impulsive” and said requiring them to wait three years to buy a long gun “is not a huge constitutional violation.”

    “The rest of us have the right to be safe,” Gottlieb said.

    Federal law has long set the minimum age at 21 for handgun purchases.

    Rep. Jessica Baker, R-Jacksonville, said the state law created an “unfair situation.” While people under 21 cannot buy rifles or other long guns, they can receive them as gifts.

    “if we believe in equality, how is it that a young adult from a well-off family can get a long gun as a gift and protect their home and their families, but a young adult with no family support cannot?” Baker said. “We’re basically saying you can defend yourself, but only if you have parents who can afford to give you a long gun.”

    Luis Valdes, Florida State director at Gun Owners Of America, called the age-21 requirement “ludicrously hypocritical.”

    “It is horrible that we have a Republican supermajority that campaigns on being pro-gun, but some of our Republican lawmakers actually vote against this bill or don’t even bring it up in other chambers,” Valdes said.

    Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who took office in February, has declined to defend the law at the U.S. Supreme Court.

    “This bill is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court with the support of the Florida attorney general, because now we have one that actually can read a case decision,” Eric Friday, general counsel for the Second Amendment group Florida Carry, said.

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    The bill, if approved, would make it legal to use testing strips, and could help curb overdose deaths

    The controversial bill would lower the minimum age to purchase rifles and other long guns from 21 to 18



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    Jim Turner, News Service of Florida
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  • Parkland Families, Students Watch As Demolition Begins At School Shooting Site

    Parkland Families, Students Watch As Demolition Begins At School Shooting Site

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    Demolition efforts began Friday at the site of the three-story classroom building in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were fatally shot on Valentine’s Day 2018.

    The demolition at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which had been postponed from Thursday due to rain and flooding, started with pieces of the structure’s top floor being pulled away by machinery. Family members of the victims were invited to watch, with school faculty, students and elected officials also in attendance.

    “This is the end to the story, the period at the end of it,” Dylan Persaud, a former student who was at the school on the day of the shooting, told the Miami Herald while watching the demolition. “But you can never forget something like this.”

    A woman walks past the site of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people.

    South Florida Sun-Sentinel via Getty Images

    Officials have not yet said what will replace the building, whose demolition is expected to continue over the coming weeks while students are out for summer break.

    The building had been preserved as evidence in the shooter’s trial and has since sat closed off and boarded up, still riddled with bullet holes. It was only recently that long-abandoned objects, like textbooks, laptops, deflated Valentine’s Day balloons and wilted flowers, were cleared out ahead of the demolition, The Associated Press reported.

    Victims’ families, school and law enforcement officials, and politicians, including Vice President Kamala Harris, had all toured the building amid efforts to strengthen gun laws and school safety.

    Vice President Kamala Harris, seen in March 2024, views a memorial to the 17 people who were killed in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
    Vice President Kamala Harris, seen in March 2024, views a memorial to the 17 people who were killed in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

    DREW ANGERER via Getty Images

    “It’s important for that building to be taken down, so not only can I start to heal but also the community at large,” Lori Alhadeff — whose 14-year-old daughter, Alyssa, was killed in the shooting and who now chairs the Broward County School Board — told The New York Times.

    Aisha Hashmi, who graduated this month, was in sixth grade when the shooting happened. But she said her older siblings were on campus when the shooting happened, and students would still have to pass by the empty building in the years after.

    “Whenever I would walk past it, it was just kind of eerie,” she told The Associated Press.

    A fence surrounding the building helped block it from view, but students could peer into its windows when the wind blew back the fence’s screening, she said.

    “It is heartbreaking to see and then have to go sit in your English class,” said Hashmi.

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  • Emboldened Biden, Dems push ban on so-called assault weapons

    Emboldened Biden, Dems push ban on so-called assault weapons

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden speaks about the “scourge” of gun violence, his go-to answer is to zero in on so-called assault weapons.

    America has heard it hundreds of times, including this week after shootings in Colorado and Virginia: The president wants to sign into law a ban on high-powered guns that have the capacity to kill many people very quickly.

    “The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. Just sick,” Biden said on Thanksgiving Day. “I’m going to try to get rid of assault weapons.”

    After the mass killing last Saturday at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, he said in a statement: “When will we decide we’ve had enough? … We need to enact an assault weapons ban to get weapons of war off America’s streets.”

    When Biden and other lawmakers talk about “assault weapons,” they are using an inexact term to describe a group of high-powered guns or semi-automatic long rifles, like an AR-15, that can fire 30 rounds fast without reloading. By comparison, New York Police Department officers carry a handgun that shoots about half that much.

    A weapons ban is far off in a closely divided Congress. But Biden and the Democrats have become increasingly emboldened in pushing for stronger gun controls — and doing so with no clear electoral consequences.

    The Democratic-led House passed legislation in July to revive a 1990s-era ban on “assault weapons,” with Biden’s vocal support. And the president pushed a ban nearly everywhere that he campaigned this year.

    Still, in the midterm elections, Democrats kept control of the Senate and Republicans were only able to claim the slimmest House majority in two decades.

    The tough talk follows passage in June of a landmark bipartisan bill on gun laws, and it reflects steady progress that gun control advocates have been making in recent years.

    “I think the American public has been waiting for this message,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who has been the Senate’s leading advocate for stronger gun control since the massacre of 20 children at a school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012. “There has been a thirst from voters, especially swing voters, young voters, parents, to hear candidates talk about gun violence, and I think Democrats are finally sort of catching up with where the public has been.”

    Just over half of voters want to see nationwide gun policy made more strict, according to AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago. About 3 in 10 want gun policy kept as is. Only 14% prefer looser gun laws.

    There are clear partisan divides. About 9 in 10 Democrats want stricter gun laws, compared with about 3 in 10 Republicans. About half of Republicans want gun laws left as they are and only one-quarter want to see gun laws be made less strict.

    Once banned in the United States, the high-powered firearms are now the weapon of choice among young men responsible for many of the most devastating mass shootings. Congress allowed the restrictions first put in place in 1994 on the manufacture and sales of the weapons to expire a decade later, unable to muster the political support to counter the powerful gun lobby and reinstate the weapons ban.

    When he was governor of Florida, current Republican Sen. Rick Scott signed gun control laws in the wake of mass shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and a night club in Orlando. But he has consistently opposed weapons bans, arguing like many of his Republican colleagues that most gun owners use them lawfully.

    “People are doing the right thing, why would we take away their weapons?” Scott asked as the Senate was negotiating gun legislation last summer. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

    He said more mental health counseling, assessments of troubled students and law enforcement on campus make more sense.

    “Let’s focus on things that actually would change something,” Scott said.

    Law enforcement officials have long called for stricter gun laws, arguing that the availability of these weapons makes people less safe and makes their jobs more dangerous.

    Mike Moore, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, the country’s third-largest, said it just makes sense to talk about guns when gun violence is rising nationwide, and consider what the government can do to make the streets safer. He is grateful Biden is bringing it up so much.

    “This isn’t a one-and-done,” Moore said of the shooting in Colorado Springs. “These things are evolving all the time, in other cities, at any moment another incident happens. It’s crying out for the federal government, for our legislators, to go out and make this change,” he said.

    On Tuesday, six people were shot dead at a Walmart in Virginia. Over the past six months there has been a supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York; a massacre of school children in Uvalde, Texas; and the July Fourth killing of revelers in Highland Park, Illinois.

    The legislation that Biden signed in June will, among other things, help states put in place “red flag” laws that make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people judged to be dangerous.

    But a ban was never on the table.

    A 60-vote threshold in the Senate means some Republicans must be on board. Most are are steadfastly opposed, arguing it would be too complicated, especially as sales and varieties of the firearms have proliferated. There are many more types of these high-powered guns today than in 1994, when the ban was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

    “I’d rather not try to define a whole group of guns as being no longer available to the American public,” said Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who is a hunter and owns several guns, some of them passed down through his family. “For those of us who have grown up with guns as part of our culture, and we use them as tools — there’s millions of us, there’s hundreds of millions of us — that use them lawfully.”

    In many states where the bans have been enacted, the restrictions are being challenged in court, gaining strength from a Supreme Court ruling in June expanding gun rights.

    “We feel pretty confident, even despite the arguments made by the other side, that history and tradition as well as the text of the Second Amendment are on our side,” said David Warrington, chairman and general counsel for the National Association for Gun Rights.

    Biden was instrumental in helping secure the 1990s ban as a senator. The White House said that while it was in place, mass shootings declined, and when it expired in 2004, shootings tripled.

    The reality is complicated. The data on the effectiveness is mixed and there is a sense that other measures that are not as politically fraught might actually be more effective, said Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at the State University of New York-Cortland and author of “The Politics of Gun Control.”

    Politically, the ban sparked a backlash, even though the final law was a compromise version of the initial bill, he said.

    “The gun community was furious,” Spitzer said.

    The ban has been blamed in some circles for the Democrats losing control of Congress in 1994, though subsequent research has shown that the loss was likely more about strong, well-funded conservative candidates and district boundaries, Spitzer said.

    Still, after Democrat Al Gore, who supported stricter gun laws, lost the 2000 White House race to Republican George W. Bush, Democrats largely backed off the issue until the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. Even after that, it was not a campaign topic until the 2018 midterms.

    Now, gun control advocates see progress.

    “The fact that the American people elected a president who has long been a vocal and steadfast supporter of bold gun safety laws — and recently reelected a gun sense majority to the Senate — says everything you need to know about how dramatically the politics on this issue have shifted,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Nuha Dolby contributed to this report.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of gun politics at https://apnews.com/hub/gun-politics

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  • Board fires schools chief after Parkland massacre report

    Board fires schools chief after Parkland massacre report

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The superintendent of Florida’s second largest school district was fired following a late-night motion brought up by a board member appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis following a grand jury report into the Parkland school massacre.

    The board voted 5-4 to fire Broward Schools Superintendent Vickie Cartwright, who didn’t hold the post at the time of the 2018 shooting, after Broward school board member Daniel Foganholi brought up the surprise motion Monday night.

    All five board members voting against Cartwright in Florida’s most Democratic-leaning county were appointed by DeSantis, a Republican. Four of those appointees will be gone next week when they will be replaced by board members who won elections last week.

    Cartwright didn’t comment about the firing. Her husband was in the audience, but declined to comment.

    The dissenting school board members included Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter was killed in the shooting and Debra Hixon, whose husband was also fatally shot in the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

    “Dr. Vickie Cartwright is a wonderful individual, but leading the nation’s sixth-largest school district requires a hands-on leader and someone that will make real change,” Torey Alston, who was elected last week, said in a statement. “Based on recent systemic issues, the Board decided to go in a different direction.”

    Cartwright replaced Robert Runcie, who resigned in 2021 after perjury charges were brought against him.

    “There are some great people who work for this organization, but toxic behavior continues to happen,” Foganholi said in making the motion. “This is about accountability.”

    Some school board members said the motion was unfair since they had just asked Cartwright on Oct. 25 to address a long list of concerns.

    “This action is impulsive and inappropriate at this moment, and I cannot support this,” Leonardi said.

    The meeting was publicly advertised, but there was nothing on the agenda suggesting that Cartwright would be fired, the South Florida SunSentinel reported. The newspaper said one public speaker, who regularly attends school board meetings, addressed the issue, and supported the superintendent’s firing.

    The board called a special meeting on Tuesday to address hiring an interim replacement.

    Foganholi didn’t have enough votes when he first brought up the motion, with two DeSantis appointees speaking out against the move. They later agreed to it, with Kevin Tynan being the deciding vote after asking for a minute to think about it.

    Cartwright was named interim superintendent in last August and was hired permanently in February. Her contract, which goes through late 2024, requires her to be given 60 days notice. She is also entitled to about $134,600 in severance pay.

    The motion to fire her came at the end of the board’s discussion of two audits criticizing the district’s practices.

    Since DeSantis removed and replaced four board members in August, Cartwright has been frequently accused of failing to fix a problematic culture in the district. Foganholi, who brought up the motion, had been appointed to the board earlier by DeSantis.

    Former Stoneman Douglas student Nikolas Cruz, 24, was sentenced to life in prison earlier this month after pleading guilty to the massacre in 2021.

    Broward’s school district is the nation’s sixth-largest, with more than 270,000 students at 333 campuses and an annual budget of $4 billion.

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  • Parkland killer to get life, but families getting their say

    Parkland killer to get life, but families getting their say

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Parents, wives, children and siblings of the 17 people murdered by Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz finally got their chance after almost five years to verbally thrash him face-to-face — and those who accepted the opportunity didn’t waste it.

    More will get their chance Wednesday on the second day of a hearing that will end with Cruz formally sentenced to life without parole for the Valentine’s Day 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in suburban Fort Lauderdale. Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer has no choice but to impose that sentence as the jury in Cruz’s penalty trial could not unanimously agree that he deserved the death penalty.

    Members of the victims’ families and some of the 17 wounded who survived went to a lectern about 20 feet (6 meters) from Cruz on Tuesday, stared him in the eye and let out their anger and grief, with many telling the 24-year-old they hope his remaining years are filled with the fear and pain he inflicted. Many also criticized a Florida law that requires jury unanimity for a death sentence to be imposed — Cruz’s jurors voted 9-3 on Oct. 13 for his execution.

    “He has escaped this punishment because a minority of the jury was given the power to overturn the majority decision made by people who were able to see him for what he is – a remorseless monster who deserves no mercy,” Meghan Petty said. Her younger sister, 14-year-old Alaina, died when Cruz fired into his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle into her classroom as he stalked the halls of a three-story building for seven minutes, firing 140 shots. He had been planning the shooting for seven months.

    “A person has to be incredibly sick to want to hurt another human being. Even sicker to dwell on the desire and craft a plan and unimaginably evil to execute that plan, which didn’t just hurt people but ended lives,” she said. “To add insult to murder he was even arrogant enough to plan a disguise believing that he’d be able to escape his actions while my sister lay dying on a dirty classroom floor.”

    Cruz, a former Stoneman Douglas student and then 19, wore a school shirt so that he could blend in with fleeing students as he escaped. He was arrested an hour later.

    Cruz, shackled and wearing a red jail jumpsuit, stared at Tuesday’s speakers, but showed little emotion.

    Anthony Montalto III, whose older sister, 14-year-old Gina, was murdered by a bullet fired point-blank into her chest, said he was at the neighboring middle school and heard the gunshots. He said he felt a pain in his chest — he believes it was a sign of his sister’s death.

    “To go from a younger brother to an only child … is a dramatic change for anyone,” he said. He then criticized the defense claim that excessive drinking by Cruz’s birth mother during pregnancy caused brain damage that led to a life of erratic and sometimes violent behavior that culminated in the shooting.

    “This reality I now live in is an unfortunate truth. An even more unfortunate truth is that this country has forgotten who the victim is. The murderer is not a victim of drinking during pregnancy. He is not a victim of mental health issues. He is a murdering bastard who should be made an example of,” Montalto said.

    Anne Ramsay recounted the last text she got from her 17-year-old daughter Helena, thanking her for the Valentine’s cookie she had packed for her. That afternoon, Helena also died when Cruz fired into her classroom.

    “She was a lovely girl, an angel,” Ramsay said.

    She said she had mixed feelings before the trial about whether Cruz should get the death penalty, but after hearing the evidence she has no doubt that would have been the proper punishment.

    “You are pure evil,” she told Cruz.

    Thomas Hixon’s father, athletic director Chris Hixon, was shot when he burst through a door and ran at Cruz, trying to stop him. The Navy veteran fell wounded on the floor and tried to take cover in an alcove, but Cruz walked over and shot him again.

    Thomas Hixon, a Marine veteran, recalled Cruz claiming remorse a year ago when he pleaded guilty to the murders, setting the stage for the penalty trial.

    “Where was your remorse when you saw my father injured and bleeding on the floor and decided to shoot him for a third time?” Hixon told Cruz. “Your defense preyed on the idea of your humanity, but you had none for those you encountered on February 14th.”

    Ines Hixon, Thomas’ wife and a Navy flight officer, said she was deployed off Iran and had returned from a flight when she saw an email from her husband that his father had been killed. She assumed it was in a car crash, only finding out in a phone call he had been shot.

    “When he told me what had happened, I collapsed to the floor,” she said, crying. She called Cruz “a domestic terrorist.”

    “Through my service, I thought I was the one in danger but it was my family being slain back home,” she said.

    ———

    AP writer Freida Frisaro in Miami contributed to this story.

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  • Sentencing hearing set for Parkland school mass murderer

    Sentencing hearing set for Parkland school mass murderer

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz’s two-day sentencing hearing begins Tuesday with the families of the 17 people he murdered getting their chance after almost five years to address him directly about the devastation he brought to their lives.

    After they and the 17 people Cruz wounded get their chance to speak, Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer on Wednesday will formally sentence him to life in prison without parole for his Feb. 14, 2018, massacre at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. She has no other option as the jury in his recently concluded penalty trial could not unanimously agree that the 24-year-old former Stoneman Douglas student deserved a death sentence.

    The families gave highly emotional statements during the trial, but were restricted about what they could tell jurors: They could only describe their loved ones and the toll the killings had on their lives. The wounded could only say what happened to them.

    They were barred from addressing Cruz directly or saying anything about him — a violation would have risked a mistrial. And the jurors were told they couldn’t consider the family statements as aggravating factors as they weighed whether Cruz should die.

    Now, the grieving and the scarred can speak directly to Cruz, if they choose.

    His attorneys say Cruz is not expected to speak. He apologized in court last year after pleading guilty to the murders and attempted murders — but families told reporters they found the apology self-serving and aimed at garnering sympathy.

    That plea set the stage for a three-month penalty trial that ended Oct. 13 with the jury voting 9-3 for a death sentence — jurors said those voting for life believed Cruz is mentally ill and should be spared. Under Florida law, a death sentence requires unanimity.

    Prosecutors had argued that Cruz planned the shooting for seven months before he slipped into a three-story classroom building, firing 140 shots with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle down hallways and into classrooms. He fatally shot some wounded victims after they fell. Cruz said he chose Valentine’s Day so it could never again be celebrated at Stoneman Douglas.

    Cruz’s attorneys never questioned the horror he inflicted, but focused on their belief that his birth mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy left him brain damaged and condemned to a life of erratic and sometimes violent behavior that culminated in the massacre — the deadliest mass shooting to go to trial in U.S. history.

    Nine other people in the U.S. who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or immediately after their attacks by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 massacre of 23 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, is awaiting trial.

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  • Families get final say before Parkland shooter is sentenced

    Families get final say before Parkland shooter is sentenced

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz will be sentenced to life in prison this week — but not before the families of the 17 people he murdered get the chance to tell him what they think.

    A two-day hearing is scheduled to begin Tuesday that will conclude with Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer formally sentencing Cruz for his Feb. 14, 2018, massacre at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Because the jury at his penalty trial could not unanimously agree that the 24-year-old deserved a death sentence, Scherer can only sentence the former Stoneman Douglas student to life without parole — an outcome most of the families criticized.

    Each family of the 14 students and three staff members Cruz murdered can speak, as can the 17 people he wounded during the seven-minute attack. The families gave highly emotional statements during the trial, but were restricted about what they could tell jurors: They could only describe their loved ones and the murders’ toll on their lives. The wounded could only say what happened to them.

    They were barred from addressing Cruz directly or saying anything about him — a violation would have risked a mistrial. And the jurors were told they couldn’t consider the family statements as aggravating factors as they weighed whether Cruz should die.

    Now, the grieving and the scarred can speak directly to Cruz, if they choose.

    “We are looking forward to speaking without the guardrails that were imposed upon us,” said Tony Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter Gina was murdered.

    Broward County Public Defender Gordon Weekes, whose lawyers represent Cruz, said he has no problem with the families expressing their anger directly to Cruz.

    “Rightly so,” Weekes said. The sentencing hearing “is not only an accountability process, but there are also some cathartic pieces that come from it.”

    “Hopefully, after expressing (their anger), not only will the community be able to hear the pain they are carrying, the court will be able to hear it and we will move forward.”

    Cruz is not expected to speak, Weekes said. He apologized in court last year after pleading guilty to the murders and attempted murders — but families told reporters they found the apology self-serving and aimed at garnering sympathy.

    That plea set the stage for a three-month penalty trial that ended Oct. 13 with the jury voting 9-3 for a death sentence — jurors said those voting for life believed Cruz is mentally ill and should be spared. Under Florida law, a death sentence requires unanimity.

    Prosecutors had argued that Cruz planned the shooting for seven months before he slipped into a three-story classroom building, firing 140 shots with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle down hallways and into classrooms. He fatally shot some wounded victims after they fell. Cruz said he chose Valentine’s Day so it could never again be celebrated at Stoneman Douglas.

    Cruz’s attorneys never questioned the horror he inflicted, but focused on their belief that his birth mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy left him brain damaged and condemned him to a life of erratic and sometimes violent behavior that culminated in the massacre — the deadliest mass shooting to go to trial in U.S. history.

    After Cruz is sentenced, he will be transferred from the Broward County jail to the state correctional system’s processing center near Miami, then later to a maximum-security prison, his lawyers have said. The Florida Department of Corrections declined to comment.

    Ron McAndrew, a former Florida prison warden, believes that because of Cruz’s notoriety, officials at that prison will place him in “protective management,” separated from other inmates, to keep him from being harmed.

    Cruz’s cell will be 9 feet by 12 feet (3 meters by 4 meters) with a bed, metal sink and metal toilet, McAndrew said. For one hour a day, he will be allowed alone into an outdoor cage that is usually 20 feet by 20 feet (6 meters by 6 meters) where he can exercise and bounce a basketball. Florida prisons do not have air conditioning. McAndrew noted that because Cruz has a life sentence, he will be last in line for education and rehabilitation programs.

    Cruz will be kept in protective management until prison officials believe it is safe to place him into the general population, a process that could take years, McAndrew said. It is also possible that Florida could send Cruz to another state in exchange for one of its notorious prisoners, so both could have more anonymity, the former warden said.

    But eventually, Cruz will be placed in the general population, McAndrew said. He will be required to bunk, work and mingle with other prisoners. At 5-foot-7 (1.4 meters) and 130 pounds (59 kilograms), Cruz could have difficulty defending himself — though he did attack and briefly pin a Broward jail guard. It is possible a more physically imposing prisoner could become his protector — “but that comes with a horrible price,” McAndrew said.

    Linda Beigel Schulman, whose son, teacher Scott Beigel, was murdered by Cruz, said she hopes Cruz “has the fear in him every second of his life just the way he gave that fear to every one of our loved ones whom he murdered, or the students and people that he harmed.”

    Craig Trocino, a University of Miami law professor, said one benefit of Cruz receiving a life sentence is that he will fade from public view; a death sentence would have brought a decade of appeals, with the possibility of a retrial, and eventually an execution. Each step would have been covered extensively.

    “No one is going to hear about him anymore until he dies,” Trocino said.

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  • Parkland shooter’s life sentence could bring changes to law

    Parkland shooter’s life sentence could bring changes to law

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — It wasn’t long ago that Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz would have been looking at a near-certain death sentence for murdering 17 people in Parkland, even if his jury could not unanimously agree on his fate.

    Until 2016, Florida law allowed trial judges to impose a death sentence if a majority of the jurors agreed. With a 9-3 vote Thursday supporting Cruz’s execution, Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer would have likely sent him to Death Row for the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.

    Now, however, a vote of anything less than 12-0 means an automatic sentence of life without parole — a standard the Stoneman Douglas families and the head of the state’s prosecutors association want changed. That would again put Florida in a distinct minority among the 27 states that still have the death penalty where almost all require juror unanimity.

    Ed Brodsky, president of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, believes the Legislature will next year consider changing the law it passed after a pair of court decisions rejected the old law.

    “When there is an overwhelmingly majority and sentiment about what the ultimate penalty should be, should one minority voice be able to dominate and hijack justice?” said Brodsky, the elected state attorney for Sarasota County and its neighbors.

    Gov. Ron DeSantis at a Friday press conference criticized the sentence, but wouldn’t specify what changes he would support.

    “We need to do some reforms to be better serving victims of crimes and the families of victims of crimes and not always bend over backwards to do everything we need to for the perpetrators of crimes,” DeSantis said.

    Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty a year ago to the murder of 14 Stoneman Douglas students and three staff members on Feb. 14, 2018. That left it up to the seven-man, five-woman jury to only decide whether he would be sentenced to death or life without parole.

    The three-month trial included horrific prosecution videos, photos and testimony about Cruz’s murders. That was followed by defense testimony about his birth mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy that witnesses said created a brain-damaged person who began displaying erratic, bizarre and violent behavior at age 2.

    After seven hours of deliberations, the jurors announced Thursday they unanimously agreed the prosecution’s argument for aggravating factors such as the multiple deaths and Cruz’s planning did exist, but not on whether those outweighed the mitigating circumstances. Scherer will impose Cruz’s life sentence Nov. 1.

    “If this was not the most perfect death penalty case, then why do we have the death penalty at all?” said Linda Beigel Schulman, the mother of slain teacher Scott Beigel.

    But some defense attorneys and capital punishment experts said it wasn’t surprising the jurors couldn’t unanimously agree. Only 18 death sentences were handed down nationwide last year, two of them in Florida.

    The latest Gallup Poll showed 54% of Americans favor the death penalty, down from 80% in the mid-1990s. And while the Cruz jurors all said they could vote for the death penalty if chosen, they didn’t say they support it.

    “At first glance, you think to yourself, ‘My God, how can you not vote for the death penalty?’” said Richard Escobar, a Tampa defense attorney and former prosecutor. He has tried capital cases in both roles. “But you’ve got to reflect and think to yourself, ‘If this person was truly mentally ill, you shouldn’t impose the death penalty because they got that mental illness through no fault of their own.’”

    Robert Dunham, the Death Penalty Information Center’s executive director, said the Cruz case has a lot in common with the 2012 shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater where 12 people died. In that case, 11 jurors voted for death while one disagreed based on testimony about the shooter’s mental illness. That meant a life sentence.

    “It’s not a question of does the murder warrant the death penalty. (Cruz) is clearly the type of case in which a jury could reasonably impose the death penalty,” Dunham said. “The question is ‘Does the defendant deserve the death penalty?’”

    Florida’s law allowing for a majority jury vote had been in place for decades before it was overturned, but it was an outlier. Almost all death penalty states required unanimity throughout those years or adopted it. Alabama allows a death sentence after a 10-2 vote. Missouri and Indiana allow the judge to decide if jurors unanimously agree the aggravating circumstances exist but can’t agree on a sentence.

    Then in 2016, by an 8-1 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Florida’s law, saying the judge had too much weight in the decision.

    The Legislature passed a bill requiring a 10-2 jury recommendation, but the state Supreme Court overturned it. In 2017, the law was changed to require a unanimous jury.

    Three years later, however, DeSantis, a Republican, replaced three retiring Florida justices with more conservative jurists and the state court rescinded the earlier decision. It said a death recommendation no longer needed to be unanimous, but legislators through three annual sessions haven’t changed the law back from unanimity. DeSantis never pushed them.

    David S. Weinstein, a Miami criminal defense lawyer and former prosecutor, doesn’t think DeSantis and the Legislature will make any changes to unanimity next year, either — that would risk the U.S. Supreme Court throwing out the state law again.

    “That ship has sailed,” he said.

    But will the Cruz sentence make Florida prosecutors less likely to seek the death penalty?

    Craig Trocino, a University of Miami law professor who previously handled death penalty appeals, doesn’t think so.

    “It might even harden their resolve,” he said.

    Still, he said, it is difficult to make broad predictions on the impact fringe cases like Cruz will have. No U.S. mass shooter who killed as many or more than Cruz had ever gone to trial — nine were killed by themselves or police during their attack or immediately after. A 10th is awaiting trial in Texas.

    On Cruz’s side, it is rare for attorneys to have so much documentation supporting their mitigating circumstances. The Broward public defender’s office also had better-quality attorneys to assign to Cruz’s case and more money for investigations than their counterparts in smaller jurisdictions typically do, he said.

    In those counties, “Mitigation would be one witness and it would be mama saying, ‘He was always a troubled kid,’” Trocino said.

    ——

    Gresko reported from Washington, D.C. Farrington reported from Tallahassee, Florida. AP reporter Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee contributed to this report.

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  • Parkland shooter prosecutors call for probe of juror threat

    Parkland shooter prosecutors call for probe of juror threat

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Prosecutors in the case of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz are calling for an investigation after a juror said she felt threatened by another member of the jury during deliberations that ended Thursday with a life sentence for Cruz’s murder of 17 people.

    The motion calls for law enforcement to interview the unnamed juror after she told the state attorney’s office about what “she perceived to be a threat from a fellow juror while in the jury room.” No further details were given. A hearing is set for Friday afternoon.

    A divided jury spared Cruz the death penalty and instead decided to send him to prison for the rest of his life in a decision that left many families of the victims angered, baffled and in tears. Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty a year ago to murdering 14 students and three staff members, and wounding 17 others, at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018.

    Florida criminal defense attorneys Richard Escobar and David Weinstein, who are both former prosecutors, said that even if a threat was made, the jury’s decision will not be overturned because of double jeopardy, or trying the same defendant twice for the same crime.

    Weinstein pointed to a 1990s case involving two drug kingpins who bribed a jury and were acquitted. Even under that circumstance, prosecutors couldn’t retry the duo for drug trafficking, but did convict them on charges stemming from the bribery.

    Under Florida law, a death sentence requires a unanimous vote on at least one count. The 12-person jury unanimously agreed there were aggravating factors to warrant a possible death sentence, such as agreeing that the murders were “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel.”

    But one or more jurors also found mitigating factors, such as untreated childhood problems. In the end, the jury could not agree that the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating ones, so Cruz will get life without parole. Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer will formally issue the life sentences Nov. 1. Relatives, along with the students and teachers Cruz wounded, will be given the opportunity to speak.

    The jurors pledged during the selection process that they could vote for a death sentence, but some victims’ parents, some of whom attended the trial almost daily, wondered whether all of them were being honest.

    Juror Denise Cunha sent a short handwritten note to the judge Thursday defending her vote for a life sentence and denying she intended to vote that way before the trial began.

    “The deliberations were very tense and some jurors became extremely unhappy once I mentioned that I would vote for life,” Cunha wrote. She did not explain her vote and it is unknown if she is the juror who complained to the state attorney’s office.

    Jury foreman Benjamin Thomas told local reporters that three jurors voted for life on the final ballot. Two were willing to reconsider, but one was a “hard no” for the death penalty.

    “It really came down to a specific (juror) that he (Cruz) was mentally ill,” Thomas said. He did not say whether that person was Cunha.

    ———

    Izaguirre reported from Tallahassee, Florida.

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  • Jury reaches decision on sentence of Parkland school shooter

    Jury reaches decision on sentence of Parkland school shooter

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A jury said Thursday that it has reached a decision on whether to recommend that Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz be executed for the 2018 massacre that killed 17 people at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

    The recommendation was not immediately released and came in the second day of deliberations, 15 minutes after jurors arrived and examined the gun Cruz used.

    The decision promises an end to a three-month trial that included graphic videos, photos and testimony from the massacre and its aftermath, heart-wrenching testimony from victims’ family members and a tour of the still blood-spattered building.

    The jury’s decision must be unanimous if it intends to recommend the death penalty, and if that happens, it will be up to Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer to make a final decision. If all jurors can’t agree on recommending death, then Cruz would get life in prison.

    The jury of 12 people had asked late Wednesday to see the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, but the Broward County Sheriff’s Office security team objected, even though the gun has been made inoperable and Cruz’s ammunition would be removed from the jury room.

    Lead prosecutor Mike Satz, who has more the five decades of experience, pointed out that in every murder case he has tried or knows, jurors got to examine and handle the weapon in their room — and he said a knife or machete is more dangerous than a gun without a firing pin. Security has never been an issue, he said.

    Cruz’s attorneys had no objection to jurors seeing the gun.

    Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty a year ago to murdering 14 students and three staff members and wounding 17 others on Feb. 14, 2018. Cruz said he chose Valentine’s Day to make it impossible for Stoneman Douglas students to celebrate the holiday ever again. The jury will determine only if Cruz is sentenced to death or life without parole. For Cruz to get a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous.

    During the prosecution’s rebuttal case, Satz and his team argued that Cruz’s smooth movements with the gun and his ease in reloading helps show he does not have any neurological disorders, as claimed by his attorneys.

    Lead defense attorney Melisa McNeill and her team have never disputed that Cruz committed a horrible crime, but they say his birth mother’s excessive drinking during pregnancy left him with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and put him on a path that led to the shooting.

    The massacre is the deadliest mass shooting that has ever gone to trial in the U.S. Nine other people in the U.S. who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or immediately after their attacks by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 massacre of 23 at an E l Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.

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  • EXPLAINER: What next in the Florida school shooter trial?

    EXPLAINER: What next in the Florida school shooter trial?

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The jurors who will decide whether Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz is sentenced to death or life without parole are expected to begin their deliberations Wednesday, concluding a three-month trial.

    Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty last year to the murders of 14 students and three staff members at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018. The trial has only been to determine his sentence.

    Cruz’s massacre is the deadliest mass shooting that has ever gone to trial in the U.S. Nine other people in the U.S. who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or immediately after their attacks by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 massacre of 23 at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.

    The jurors will be sequestered during their deliberations, which could take hours or days — no one knows. They have been told to pack for at least two nights.

    Here is a look at the case, how the seven-man, five-woman jury will come to their decision and what will happen after that.

    WHAT DID CRUZ DO?

    Cruz, by his own admission, began thinking about committing a school shooting while in middle school, about five years before he carried it out. He purchased his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle almost exactly a year before the shooting and his planning became serious about seven months in advance. He researched previous mass shooters, saying he tried to learn from their experience. He bought ammunition, a vest to carry it and a bag to hide it. He picked Valentine’s Day to make sure it would never be celebrated at the school again.

    He took an Uber to the school, arriving about 20 minutes before dismissal. He went inside a three-story classroom building, shooting down the halls and into classrooms for about seven minutes. He returned to some wounded to kill them with a second volley. He then tried to shoot at fleeing students from a third-floor window, but the thick hurricane glass thwarted him. He put down his gun and fled, but was captured about an hour later.

    WHAT HAPPENED AT THE TRIAL?

    Lead prosecutor Mike Satz kept his case simple. He played security videos of the shooting and showed gruesome crime scene and autopsy photos. Teachers and students testified about watching others die. He took the jury to the fenced-off building, which remains blood-stained and bullet-pocked. Parents and spouses gave tearful and angry statements.

    Cruz’s lead attorney Melisa McNeill and her team never questioned the horror he inflicted, but focused on their belief that his birth mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy left him with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Their experts said his bizarre, troubling and sometimes violent behavior starting at age 2 was misdiagnosed as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, meaning he never got the proper treatment. That left his widowed adoptive mother overwhelmed, they said.

    WHAT’S REQUIRED FOR CRUZ TO GET A DEATH SENTENCE?

    The jurors will be voting 17 times — once for each victim. For the jurors to recommend a death sentence for a specific victim, they first must unanimously agree that the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the killing involved at least one aggravating circumstance as proscribed under Florida law.

    This part should not be difficult — the listed aggravating circumstances include knowingly creating a great risk of death to numerous people, committing murders that were “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel” or committed in a “cold, calculated, and premeditated manner.” They then must unanimously agree that the aggravating factors warrant consideration of the death penalty.

    They then must determine whether the aggravating circumstances “outweigh” the mitigating factors that the defense argued such as his birth mother’s drinking, his adoptive mother’s alleged failure to get him proper psychiatric care and his admission of guilt.

    If they do, the jurors can then recommend a death sentence — but that’s not required. A juror can ignore the weighing exercise and vote for life out of mercy for Cruz.

    A death sentence recommendation requires a unanimous vote on at least one victim. If one or more jurors vote for life on all victims, that will be his sentence.

    WHAT HAPPENS IF THE JURY RECOMMENDS A DEATH SENTENCE?

    Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer will schedule a sentencing hearing, likely months from now. Cruz’s attorneys will have an opportunity to persuade her to override the jury and impose a life sentence, but that rarely succeeds. If sentenced to death, he will be sent to Florida’s Death Row while his case goes through appeals. It will be years before he is executed, assuming the death sentence isn’t overturned and a retrial required.

    WHAT HAPPENS IF THE JURY IMPOSES A LIFE SENTENCE?

    If the jury cannot unanimously agree that Cruz should be executed for at least one victim, he will be sentenced to life without parole — Scherer cannot overrule the jury. She could sentence him immediately or schedule a future hearing.

    After he is sentenced, the Florida Department of Corrections would assign him to a maximum security prison where he would be part of the general population. McNeill, in her closing argument, alluded that could be an exceedingly dangerous place for someone like Cruz.

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  • Attorneys argue over school shooter’s fate: death or prison

    Attorneys argue over school shooter’s fate: death or prison

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The prosecutor and defense attorney for Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz agreed Tuesday that his 2018 attack that killed 17 people was horrible, but disagreed in their closing arguments on whether it was an act of evil worthy of execution or one of a broken person who should be imprisoned for life.

    Lead prosecutor Mike Satz and his defense counterpart, Melisa McNeill, painted for the 12 jurors competing pictures of what drove Cruz’s attack at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day.

    For Satz, Cruz was driven by antisocial personality disorder — in lay terms, he’s a sociopath. He deserves a death sentence because he “was hunting his victims” as he stalked a three-story classroom building for seven minutes. He fired his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle into some victims at close range and returned to wounded victims as they lay helpless “to finish them off.”

    Satz pointed to Cruz’s internet writings and videos, where he talked about his murderous desires such as when he wrote, “No mercy, no questions, double tap. I am going to kill a … ton of people and children.”

    “It is said that what one writes and says is a window into their soul,” Satz said as the three-month trial neared its conclusion. The killings, he said, “were unrelentlessly heinous, atrocious and cruel.”

    McNeill said neither Cruz nor herself has ever denied what he did and that “he knew right from wrong and he chose wrong.” But she said the former Stoneman Douglas student is “a broken, brain-damaged, mentally ill young man,” doomed from conception by the heavy drinking and drug use of his birth mother during pregnancy. She argued for a sentence of life without parole, assuring them he will never walk free again.

    “It’s the right thing to do. Mercy is what makes us civilized. Giving mercy to Nikolas will say more about who you are than it will ever say about him,” McNeill told the jury.

    Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty a year ago to murdering 14 students and three staff members and wounding 17 others.

    The jury will only decide his sentence, and a unanimous vote is required for death. Jurors can vote for death if they believe the prosecution’s mitigating factors such as the multiple deaths and the planning outweigh the defense’s mitigating factors such as his birth mother’s drinking. They can also vote for life out of mercy for Cruz. Deliberations are expected to begin Wednesday.

    Cruz, dressed in an off-white sweater, sat impassively during the presentations, occasionally exchanging notes with his attorneys. A large number of the victims’ parents, wives and family members packed their section of the courtroom, many of them weeping during Satz’s presentation. The mother of a murdered 14-year-old girl fled the courtroom before bursting into loud sobs in the hallway. Just minutes earlier, the families had greeted each other with smiles, handshakes and hugs.

    Satz meticulously went through the murders, reminding the jurors how each victim died and how Cruz looked some in the eye before he shot them multiple times.

    “They all knew what was going on, what was going to happen,” Satz said.

    As he had during the trial, Satz played security videos of the shooting and showed photos. He talked about the death of one 14-year-old girl. Cruz shot her and then went back to shoot her again, putting his gun against her chest.

    “Right on her skin. She was shot four times and she died,” Satz said. He then noted a YouTube comment, which jurors saw during the trial, in which Cruz said: “I don’t mind shooting a girl in the chest.”

    “That’s exactly what he did,” Satz said.

    His voice breaking, Satz concluded his two-hour presentation by reciting the victims’ names, then saying that for their murders “the appropriate sentence for Nikolas Cruz is the death penalty.”

    McNeill during her presentation acknowledged the horror Cruz inflicted and said jurors have every right to be angry, “but how many times have we made decisions based solely on anger and regretted it?”

    She focused on her belief that heavy drinking by his birth mother, Brenda Woodard, during pregnancy left him with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. She said that accounts for his bizarre, troubling and sometimes violent behavior starting at age 2.

    “There is no time in our lives when we are more vulnerable to the will and the whims of another human being than when we are growing and developing in the wombs of our mothers,” McNeill said. Woodard “poisoned him in the womb. He was doomed in the womb.”

    She said Cruz’s increasingly erratic personality left his widowed adoptive mother, Lynda Cruz, overwhelmed. He punched holes in walls when he lost video games, destroyed furniture and killed animals. Visitors described the home as “a war zone,” McNeill said.

    She pleaded with the jurors to give Cruz a life sentence, telling them that even if they are the only holdout they shouldn’t fear what the reaction will be from the families or the community.

    Gesturing toward the victims’ families, she said, “There is no punishment you could ever give Nikolas Cruz that would ever make him suffer as much as those people have and as much as they will continue to suffer every single day.”

    “Sentencing Nikolas to death will not change that. It will not bring back those 17 dead people. Sentencing Nikolas to death will literally serve no purpose other than vengeance,” she said. Instead, she said, “Look into your heart. Look into your soul. The right thing here, not the popular thing, is a life sentence.”

    Cruz’s massacre is the deadliest mass shooting that has ever gone to trial in the U.S. Nine other people in the U.S. who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or immediately after their attacks by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 massacre of 23 at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.

    ———

    Associated Press reporters Freida Frisaro in Miami and Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Florida, contributed to this report.

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  • Florida school shooter may have been his own worst witness

    Florida school shooter may have been his own worst witness

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — It’s possible Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz talked himself into a death sentence.

    Prosecutors played video last week at Cruz’s penalty trial of jailhouse interviews he did this year with two of their mental health experts. In frank and sometimes graphic detail, he answered their questions about his massacre of 17 people at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018 — his planning, his motivation, the shootings.

    While it can’t be known what the 12 jurors are thinking, if any are wavering between voting for death or life without parole, his statements to Dr. Charles Scott, a forensic psychiatrist, and Robert Denney, a neuropsychologist, did not help his cause.

    “All of this made Cruz himself perhaps one of the state’s best witnesses,” said David S. Weinstein, a Miami defense attorney and former prosecutor who has been monitoring the trial.

    The jury will likely decide Cruz’s fate this week. For the 24-year-old to get a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous on at least one victim. But if all 17 counts come back with at least one vote in favor of life in prison, then that would be his sentence. Closing arguments are scheduled Tuesday, with deliberations beginning Wednesday.

    Because Cruz’s defense is that his birth mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy left him brain damaged, prosecutors could have experts examine him for their rebuttal case.

    Scott and Denney interviewed him separately for several hours. In each, Cruz sat across the table, handcuffed, a sweater draped over his chest. He sometimes asked for a pen and paper to add diagrams and drawings to his explanations.

    “The question is: What will the jury take away from the interviews? Cold-blooded killer who was vengeful and excited about the murders, or a person so hopelessly deranged that he can’t be anything but crazy?” said Bob Jarvis, a professor at Nova Southeastern University’s law school.

    Excerpts from those interviews, some of which are graphic:

    HOW LONG HAD CRUZ BEEN CONTEMPLATING A SCHOOL SHOOTING?

    “A very long time,” Cruz told Scott, starting when he was 13 or 14, about five years before he did it.

    “It was just a thought. I was reading books,” Cruz said. “It would come and go. It would pop up in my mind.”

    The thoughts would return when he watched violent videos, particularly documentaries about mass shootings at Colorado’s Columbine High School, Virginia Tech and elsewhere, he said.

    HOW DID CRUZ PLAN THE MASSACRE?

    “I did my own research,” Cruz told Scott. “I studied mass murderers and how they did it, their plans, what they got and what they used.”

    He detailed the lessons he learned: Watch for would-be rescuers coming around corners, keep some distance from your targeted victims, attack as fast as possible — and “the police didn’t do anything.”

    “I have a small opportunity to shoot people for maybe 20 minutes,” Cruz said.

    HOW DID CRUZ PREPARE?

    He told Scott he put his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle in a bag the night before and slipped its magazines into a shooting vest. He adjusted the gun’s sights and imagined what the recoil would feel like.

    “I didn’t get any sleep,” Cruz said.

    He donned the burgundy polo shirt he received when he was a member of the Stoneman Douglas Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program so he could escape by mingling with fleeing students.

    “If I had all my (shooting) gear on, they would have called the cops,” Cruz said.

    When he set out at 2 p.m., he told the Uber driver he was in the school orchestra and the bag carried his instrument.

    WHAT DID CRUZ DO WHEN HE ARRIVED?

    “I walked through the gates. Hopefully, there would be no security guards, but I was wrong,” Cruz told Scott. “I was looking at the guy and he was watching me.”

    When Cruz attended Stoneman Douglas, guards frequently checked him for weapons because of his erratic and sometimes violent behavior. When he was expelled a year before the shooting, a guard predicted he would eventually return and shoot people.

    Fearing he’d been discovered, Cruz sprinted into a three-story classroom building and quickly assembled his weapon. He told a student who happened upon him to flee because something bad was about to happen.

    He then went floor to floor, shooting down hallways and into classrooms, firing 140 shots in all.

    “I thought they would scream,” Cruz said about his first three victims. He shot them point-blank outside a locked classroom door. “It was more like they passed out and blood came pouring out of their head. It was really nasty and sad to see.”

    But he continued.

    “I think I showed mercy to three girls. I was going to walk away, but they showed nasty faces and I went back,” Cruz said. “I thought they were going to attack me.”

    Cruz shot several of his victims a second time after they fell, including his final one — a student writhing from a leg wound. He said the boy “gave me a nasty look. A look of anger.”

    “His head blew up like a water balloon,” Cruz said.

    WHY DID CRUZ STOP SHOOTING?

    Students and teachers fled the building or locked themselves in classrooms. The third-floor hallway was now empty except for victims.

    “I couldn’t find anyone to kill,” he said. “I didn’t want to do it anymore and I didn’t think there was anyone else in the building.”

    He dropped his gun and vest on the stairwell and fled. He was captured an hour later — the police officer had been looking for a young male in a Stoneman Douglas ROTC polo.

    CRUZ’S FINAL SAY

    As Denney was finishing the final interview, he asked Cruz if there was anything else he should know. Cruz thought for 10 seconds before responding: “Why I chose Valentine’s Day.”

    “Because I thought no one would love me,” Cruz explained. “I didn’t like Valentine’s Day and I wanted to ruin it for everyone.”

    “Do you mean for the family members of the kids that were killed?” Denney asked.

    “No, for the school,” Cruz replied.

    The holiday will never be celebrated there again, he said.

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  • Florida school shooter contemplated massacre for years

    Florida school shooter contemplated massacre for years

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    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz told a prosecution psychiatrist he began contemplating a mass murder during middle school, doing extensive research on earlier killers to learn their methods and mistakes to shape his own plans, video played at his penalty trial showed Monday.

    Cruz told Dr. Charles Scott during a March jailhouse interview that five years before he murdered 17 at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018, he read about the 1999 murder of 13 at Colorado’s Columbine High School, which first sparked the idea of his own mass killing. Cruz told Scott how Columbine, the 2007 murder of 32 at Virginia Tech University and the 2012 killing of 12 at a Colorado movie theater all played a part in his own preparation.

    “I studied mass murderers and how they did it,” Cruz told Scott. “How they planned, what they got and what they used.” He said he learned to watch for people coming around corners to stop him, to keep some distance from people as he fired, to attack “as fast as possible” and, in the earlier attacks, “the police didn’t do anything.”

    “I should have the opportunity to shoot people for about 20 minutes,” Cruz said.

    Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty a year ago to the murders that happened during a seven-minute attack on Feb. 14, 2018, — the trial is only to decide whether he is sentenced to death or life without the possibility of parole. A unanimous vote by the seven-man, five-woman jury is required for Cruz to get death. Anything less and his sentence will be life.

    Prosecutor Mike Satz hopes Scott’s testimony will rebut the defense’s contention that heavy drinking by Cruz’s birth mother during pregnancy caused him to suffer from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, putting him on a lifelong path of bizarre and sometimes violent behavior that culminated in the shootings. The defense also tried to show that his adoptive mother, Lynda Cruz, became overwhelmed after her husband died when Cruz was 5 and never got him complete treatment for his mental health issues. She died less than three months before the shootings.

    Scott, a University of California, Davis, forensic psychiatrist, testified Monday that his examinations of Cruz and his school and mental health records do not support the defense findings. He diagnosed Cruz with antisocial personality disorder, saying the 24-year-old former Stoneman Douglas student can control his behavior but chooses not to because he has no regard for others. For example, Scott pointed to Cruz’s 14-month employment as a cashier at a discount store with no incidents as proof he can conform.

    He also said Cruz did well in the alternative education classes he took after he was expelled from Stoneman Douglas a year before the shootings, getting a perfect score in a course he took on violence and guns.

    He said Cruz’s behavior began to spiral when a girlfriend broke up with him six months before the killings.

    Cruz told Scott that the night before the shootings, he adjusted the sights on his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle to make sure he fired accurately. He imagined how the recoil would feel and how his victims would react. He put on the burgundy polo shirt he received when he was a member of the Stoneman Douglas Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps so he would be able blend in with students when he fled.

    “I couldn’t sleep,” Cruz told Scott.

    Satz also replayed videos Cruz made in the weeks leading up to the shooting where he talked about how he would carry out the killings and hoped for a death toll of at least 20.

    Scott said Cruz told him that he specifically chose Valentine’s Day for his massacre because “he has no one to love and love him.”

    “This was not a spur of the moment decision. This was planned out for months,” Scott said.

    Cruz told Scott he stopped shooting and fled when “I didn’t have anyone else to kill.”

    The trial, which began July 18, has been progressing slowly – Monday was only the second court session in almost three weeks. Because of Hurricane Ian, the trial met just one day last week. That came after a nearly two-week pause that followed the defense’s surprise resting of its case Sept. 14 after calling only about a third of the 80 witnesses the attorneys had said they would call. The prosecution then needed time to prepare its rebuttal case and schedule witnesses.

    That case is expected to conclude this week. Closing arguments would then be given next Monday followed by deliberations.

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  • Woman charged with setting fire at apartment that killed 4

    Woman charged with setting fire at apartment that killed 4

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    A former tenant is heading to court to face arson and murder charges in connection with a fire at a Massachusetts apartment building that claimed the lives of four people, including a man who had sued right-wing radio host Alex Jones’ Infowars website

    WORCESTER, Mass. — A former tenant is heading to court Friday to face arson and murder charges in connection with a fire at a Massachusetts apartment building last May that claimed the lives of four people, including a man who had sued right-wing radio host Alex Jones ‘ Infowars website.

    Yvonne Ngoiri, 36, faces four counts of second-degree murder and was also indicted on multiple assault charges, the office of Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. said in a statement late Thursday. It was not immediately clear if she had an attorney who could comment.

    The cause of the fire at the three-story, six-unit building in Worcester in the early morning hours of May 14 was determined to be “incendiary,” according to the district attorney’s office, but no motive was disclosed.

    The victims have previously been identified as Joseph Garchali, 47; Christopher Lozeau, 53; Vincent Page, 41; and Marcel Fontaine, 29. They died of smoke inhalation and thermal injuries, authorities said.

    In addition, several residents were injured, including one who jumped from a third-story window. The building had about 20 tenants.

    Fontaine sued Infowars in Texas in 2018. The complaint, seeking unspecified damages, said Infowars posted his photograph on its website the day of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, depicting him as the gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people died.

    Lawyers for Infowars countered that Fontaine failed to show any evidence of malice or any injury because of his photo’s publication.

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  • Catholic School Installs Active Shooter Response System to Protect Students and Staff

    Catholic School Installs Active Shooter Response System to Protect Students and Staff

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    Press Release
    –


    updated: Aug 10, 2018


    NEWTON, Kan., August 10, 2018 (Newswire.com)
    –
     St. Mary Catholic School in Newton, KS has installed the SafeDefend Active Shooter Response System. Responding to recent school shooting tragedies, Principal Philip Stutey and his safety team had vetted numerous approaches to increase the security of their students and staff. After much review, the decision to adopt the SafeDefend system was an easy one. 

    The SafeDefend Active Shooter Response System was developed by a former elementary principal. As a father of three and with 475 students under his watch, Jeff Green realized that schools were not addressing the four critical areas needed to protect students and staff. Those four priorities were:

    1)      reducing law enforcement response time

    2)      ensuring law enforcement and staff had real-time crisis information

    3)      providing the ability for staff to effectively manage the crisis until help arrives

    4)      realizing the biggest threat to our schools is already inside the building

    SafeDefend utilizes multiple ways of communication in a crisis. Police and staff are immediately notified of the location of the crisis through text and email, a 911 call is placed, sirens notify all staff and visitors, and staff are provided with tools and training to survive the crisis until help arrives. Staff can utilize the tools to escape and evade, provide protection, and respond to trauma. SafeDefend is protecting students and staff in school districts across the country.

    “Traditional methods for protecting our students and staff fail us. Current and former students are the most likely threats and will be in the building. Law enforcement and staff need critical, accurate information to perform effectively.” – Jeff Green, Founder and President of SafeDefend

    Mr. Philip Stutey concurs: “SafeDefend supports our mission statement of meeting the needs of our school community spiritually, academically, emotionally and physically by providing the security needed in today’s world. Schools have safeguards against fire and weather issues but have been behind in protecting against an active intruder. No other company or product that we found offers the protection, law enforcement compatibility, empowerment of staff and peace of mind to our community like SafeDefend.”

    St. Mary Catholic School is located in Newton, KS and is part of the Wichita, KS Diocese.

    Media Contacts:

    St Mary Catholic School
    Mr. Philip Stutey, Principal
    (316) 282-1974
    pstutey@smcsnewton.org

    SafeDefend, LLC
    Jeff Green, President
    www.safedefend.com
    (913) 856-2800
    jeff@safedefend.com

    Source: SafeDefend, LLC

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  • Anonymous Alerts Program Fits the Bill for the Recently Passed STOP School Violence Act

    Anonymous Alerts Program Fits the Bill for the Recently Passed STOP School Violence Act

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    The STOP School Violence Act Prioritizes Funding for Anonymous Reporting Programs in Schools

    Press Release
    –


    updated: Mar 22, 2018


    WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., March 22, 2018 (Newswire.com)
    –
     The U.S. House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed HR 4909 to authorize $50 million in federal funding that will bring programs like the Anonymous Alerts reporting system to schools across the country, so students and adults who “See Something, Can Do Something” by anonymously reporting warning signs of mental health issues, bullying and possible violence before a tragedy can occur.

    The Federal Act calls for schools to operate “anonymous reporting systems for threats of school violence, including mobile telephone applications, hotlines, and Internet websites”.

    Over the past 5+ years, our Anonymous Alerts anti-bullying and safety reporting system has rapidly expanded throughout the United States, Canada and abroad working with the largest school districts to the smallest school districts helping them to create safer school climates.

    T. Gregory Bender, President & CEO

    “Over the past 5-plus years, our Anonymous Alerts anti-bullying and safety reporting system has rapidly expanded throughout the United States, Canada and abroad working with the largest school districts to the smallest school districts helping them to create safer school climates,” said T. Gregory Bender, President and CEO.

    “With our free-to-download Anonymous Alerts reporting system, students, parents, and staff can anonymously send incident reports directly to school personnel for situations occurring on or off school grounds, or on social media. With high priority safety threats, reports are automatically sent to law enforcement for quick action.”

    Hundreds of thousands of students walked out of class on Wednesday, March 14, 2018 to demand action from Congress on school safety. The walkout was held on the one-month anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. On that same day, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the STOP School Violence Act of 2018 in a bipartisan vote of 407 to 10.

    To learn more about Anonymous Alerts, please visit www.anonymousalerts.com.

    About Anonymous Alerts
    The Anonymous Alerts® award-winning and patented mobile applications platform was developed to encourage students to quickly report bullying, mental health concerns, drug use/dealing, campus safety threats, and more directly to school and college officials, who can take quick action. The mobile apps and systems are completely customizable for each client and include intuitive Incident Management® tools built for any level user. Anonymous Alerts® is Patented (U.S. Patent No. 9,071,579) with additional patents pending. Anonymous Alerts, LLC is based in White Plains, New York and is rapidly growing throughout the United States and abroad. For more information, please visit www.anonymousalerts.com or call 914-220-8326.

    Contact
    Public Relations
    Anonymous Alerts
    relations@anonymousalerts.com
    914.220.8326

    Source: Anonymous Alerts

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