FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Shaken jurors on Tuesday had been proven graphic movies of Parkland college shooter Nikolas Cruz gunning down defenseless college students at shut vary.
The footage — which was not proven to the court docket gallery at Cruz’s sentencing trial — drew pained expressions from the seven males and 5 girls who will determine if the admitted mass assassin will get executed or locked up for all times.
Cruz, 23, put his head down on the protection desk because the jurors seen his footage of his 2018 rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College, the place he gunned down 17 folks with an AR-15 rifle.
The movies, captured from college surveillance cameras with out sound, confirmed Cruz returning to a few of these he had wounded and firing at them once more.
Prosecutors later referred to as a solemn parade of survivors to the stand to testify about their recollections of the bloodbath.
Samantha Fuentes, now a university scholar, stated she took cowl behind a podium as Cruz, then 19, sprayed bullets into her classroom.
“I peeped my head previous the rostrum to take a look at the door,” she informed the court docket. “That's the place I noticed Cruz standing there. After he had completed firing he was standing on the window on the door.”
With a number of of her classmates useless close by, Fuentes stated she felt sharp pains and feared that she had been struck.
“I noticed that I had holes in my pants,” she informed the court docket. “I had blood working from the highest of my brow right down to my chest. I had blood in my eyes and throughout my face and in my hair. I borrowed considered one of my pals telephones to take a look at myself briefly, and what you'll have noticed would have disgusted you.”
Fuentes described the grisly aftermath of Cruz’s assault after police ultimately entered her classroom.
“I checked out my useless pals and circled they usually informed me to expire of the constructing,” she stated. “And so they stated to look down and never up and that’s the place I handed the our bodies of two college students within the hallway.”
Fuentes suffered a bullet wound to her knee and extreme shrapnel accidents that she stated proceed to plague her to at the present time, limiting her mobility and flaring up throughout chilly climate.
English instructor Dara Hass wept as she recalled the bedlam in her class after the gunshots started to blow up. Three of her college students had been killed.
“It was so loud, I keep in mind shaking,” she stated. “The scholars had been screaming. College students had been coming to my desk and screaming and shouting.”
As if describing a warzone, Hass stated her room had been obliterated by Cruz’s fusillade.
“You may odor the sulfur from the weapons, particles was flying throughout the room, college students had been crying,” she stated whereas dabbing her eyes. “So many scholar had been injured.”
Cruz has already pleaded responsible to the 17 murders.
Prosecutors are pushing for the loss of life penalty whereas his protection needs life with out parole in gentle of his troubled upbringing and psychological deficits.
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