Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz pleads guilty to murder, apologizes to victims’ families
Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty to multiple counts of murder in a Florida courtroom Wednesday, more than three years after a Valentine’s Day massacre that killed 17 people and wounded 17 others.
The 23-year-old mass shooter, who apologized to the victims’ families in a bizarre statement following the pleas, will now face a penalty trial that will determine whether he will be put to death or serve the rest of his life in prison for the killings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Cruz also answered a series of questions from Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer as she confirmed that he understood the consequences of his guilty pleas. He promptly said “guilty” after she read each of the 17 premeditated murder charges and 17 attempted murder charges against him.
“I’m very sorry for what I did,” Cruz said in a short statement. “I have to live with it every day. And if I were to get a second chance, I would do everything in my power to help others.
“I’m doing this for you, and I do not care if you don’t believe me,” he said in an apparent reference to the families attending the hearing. “I love you and I know you don’t believe me... It brings me nightmares and I can’t live with myself sometimes, but I try to push through.”
Broward State Attorney Mike Satz, the lead prosecutor in the case, detailed the allegations one more time in the courtroom as some of the relatives of the victims broke down in tears.
He said Cruz stormed the three-story school building on Feb. 14, 2018 armed with AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and launched a deadly seven-minute attack on students and staff.
“As the defendant was loading the magazine into his rifle, a student walked to the east stairwell and the defendant said to him, ‘You better get out of here. Something bad is about to happen,’” Satz told the court.
Cruz, who had been expelled from Stoneman Douglas a year earlier, then opened fire in the hallways and classrooms, killing 14 students and three staff members.
The rampage remains the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history. Some of the students who survived the attack went on to launch the gun control movement March for Our Lives.
Cruz had previously offered to plead guilty if prosecutors took the death penalty off the table. Prosecutors did not accept it, and a jury will now be selected to choose whether he serves a life sentence without parole or faces execution.
During his statement Wednesday, Cruz also talked about drugs and said he no longer watches TV.
“I hate drugs and I believe that 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 said. “I’m sorry. I can’t even watch TV anymore... I just want you to know I’m really sorry.
