Topline
Minutes after Nikolas Cruz killed 14 students and three teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018, he went to McDonalds, where he asked a fleeing student for a ride home, according to surveillance footage and witness testimony presented in Cruz’s sentencing trial Friday.
Nikolas Cruz, who pleaded guilty to killing 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, faces the … [+]
Key Facts
Restaurant surveillance footage showed Cruz approach John Wilford, a student who was sitting at a McDonalds table waiting for a ride home, less than an hour after committing the largest school shooting in U.S. history, and minutes after ordering a slushy from a Subway inside a Walmart next door.
Cruz is seen in the surveillance tape, presented on the fifth day of the sentencing trial, following Wilford as he walks outside to his mother’s parked car, when he apparently asked for a ride home.
Wilford testified that he refused, saying he had a “bad gut feeling about it.”
Wilford learned later his sister was one of the students he had shot (she survived).
Wilford was a freshman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and did not personally know Cruz, a former student, but assumed when he asked him for a ride home that he was another schoolmate fleeing from the massacre.
The jury is tasked with deciding whether Cruz, now 23, should face the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole (he already pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder).
Key Background
Cruz was expelled from the school for undisclosed disciplinary reasons a year before the shooting. He was also a former U.S. Army Junior ROTC cadet. He confessed to police the afternoon of the shooting, and in the following weeks, online statements emerged that revealed he likely had been planning the attack for months. He pleaded guilty in April. In his opening statement Monday, Florida state attorney Michael Satz, arguing for the death penalty, described the shooting was “planned” and “systematic.” Defense attorneys have not yet presented their case in the trial, but previously argued Cruz, who was 18 years old at the time of the shooting, has come to regret his actions, and should be spared the death penalty. Prosecutors rejected the defense’s previous attempts at a deal to take the death penalty off the table.
Further Reading
‘Cold’ And ‘Calculated’: Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty For Parkland School Shooter (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2022/07/22/parkland-shooter-ordered-slushy-and-asked-student-whose-sister-had-been-shot–for-a-ride-home-after-killing-17/