Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz was sentenced to 17 life sentences — one for each student killed during the shooting in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
According to The New York Post, many family members of the victims fought vigorously for Cruz to be executed. They reportedly expressed anger and shock at the sentence Cruz received. As the verdict was pronounced on Nov. 2, a voice from the section of the victims’ family was heard saying, “Burn in hell.”
Further strong comments were made by victim Scott Beigel’s mother, Linda Beigel Schulman.
“Real justice would be done if every family here were given a bullet and your AR-15 and we got to pick straws, and each one of us got to shoot one at a time at you, making sure that you felt every bit of it,” she said. “That’s real justice for you.”
Schulman went on by saying that she would take comfort knowing the danger that Cruz would face as a murderer of children in a high-security prison.
Students from the Parkland school district confronted Cruz. Many reminded him of the classes that they took together and the ways that they were connected. Parkland survivor Samantha Fuentes reminded Cruz that they were both in JROTC together.
“We were still children back then,” Fuentes said. “I was still a child when I saw you standing in the window, peering into my Holocaust studies class, holding your AR-15 that had swastikas, ironically, scratched into it. I was still a child after I watched you kill two of my friends. I was still a child when you shot me with your gun.”
Cruz continued to wear a blank and distant expression throughout the entire trial. It was the same expression he had worn during the last few days of the trial as the sentence was hanging over his head.
Judge Elizabeth Scherer presided over the hearing and pronounced the life sentence without parole. The jury voted 9-3 in favor of the death penalty for Cruz, but Florida law requires a unanimous vote for the sentence of execution.
Before Scherer pronounced the sentence, she asked whether Cruz was fit to hear the sentence. He responded saying that he was on medication but understood what was happening.
According to The Guardian, Scherer praised the victims’ families during her sentence for their patience, strength, and grace. Her address to the families was full of emotion, telling them their children would not be forgotten.
“If I could take your pain away or carry your pain for you just for five minutes so that you could breathe, I would,” she said.
The overwhelming statement from multiple parents was that if there were any case to use the death penalty, this would be it.
The Parkland shooting has remained the deadliest mass shooting at any high school in the US, including the 1999 Columbine shooting. And after a months-long trial full of emotion and rage from students and victims’ families, Cruz is sentenced to life behind bars with no chance of parole.
