In the video, gunfire seems to be coming through the door into the classroom - about 18 shots, the gunman so close that smoke seemed to billow in the window behind the bullets. "Our f-ing school is getting shot up," he wrote as a caption. ![]() In one classroom, a student used the social-media app Snapchat to record his classmates hiding. "I love you," Meghan Hill wrote in text messages to her sister, as they hunkered down one floor apart. Beigel did."Īnother school staffer - Aaron Feis, an assistant football coach and security guard - also was credited with sacrificing his life to save students during the rampage.Įlsewhere in the school, students huddled inside closets, under desks, searching for news coverage and texting parents and siblings and friends. "Superman saves lives, and that's exactly what Mr. "He's my Superman," Friend said Thursday. Beigel, 35, had been shot while rushing students to safety. "My teacher is on the floor," Kelsey Friend, 16, texted her mother. "Hey yo, hey whatcha doin?" was the last text Cruz sent, Lewis recounted. But Cruz's texts to him gave no reason for alarm. He was in class as Cruz neared the school. In the car on the way to Douglas, he was texting with the friend whose family had taken him in. That afternoon, Cruz hailed an Uber, using the online car-service app. "He said something to the effect of, 'Oh, it's Valentine's Day, I don't go to school on Valentine's Day,' " said Jim Lewis, an attorney who represents the family Cruz was staying with. Most mornings, the friend's father drove Cruz to an adult-education class, where he was studying for a GED. On Wednesday morning, the suspect was staying with a friend's family, which had taken him in after Cruz's mother died last year. "And, even still - even with that - we have 17 casualties." She started to cry. We knew what to do," said Melissa Falkowski, a teacher at the school, talking about students and faculty on CNN. The jurors will not be present."They knew what to do. Assistant State Attorney Jeff Marcus was preparing to argue against the objections. An attorney representing Cruz’s younger brother Zachary Cruz is expected to be in attendance to argue against some of the prosecution’s questions. Scherer and the legal teams will reconvene for a hearing at 9 a.m. If the jurors do not come to a unanimous agreement on the death sentence, Scherer will have to sentence Cruz to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Cruz pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in October.Īssistant Public Defender Melisa McNeill only has to convince one juror and will likely present other evidence showing Cruz suffered brain damage and struggled with mental health conditions. 22 to persuade the jurors that Cruz’s life should be spared and that spending the rest of his life in prison should be enough punishment.īroward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer had yet to sign an order about the admissibility of expert witness testimony after the prosecution and the defense came to an agreement, so the details had yet to become public on Wednesday afternoon.Ĭruz, now 23, was 19 years old when he armed himself with an AR-15 rifle and shot into classrooms and in the hallway of the school’s former three-story 1200 building. The defense is preparing to present the case on Aug. Some of the testimony had Cruz’s defense attorneys dabbing their eyes. 4 after the seven men and five women on the jury toured the preserved crime scene, watched surveillance videos, viewed photographs of the victims’ bodies, and listened to the statements of the 17 victims’ grief-stricken loved ones. The jurors, who will have to decide if Cruz deserves the death penalty for his crimes during the 2018 Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, were not in the courtroom during the hearing. ![]() “We are not relying on those types of scans or comparisons,” said Casey Secor, a capital defense attorney, as he stood next to Cruz. Charles Epstein, questioned the reliability of the analysis of the brain scan referring to it as “garbage.” Nikolas Cruz’s defense team initially wanted to introduce it as evidence but backed out after the prosecutors’ Emory University expert, Dr. ![]() – Defense attorneys will not be showing jurors images of the Parkland school shooter’s brain scan done at the Broward County main jail, attorneys in Broward County court said on Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale.
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