:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/elcomercio/MQR3LZ6WJ5GHFP336UISM7MLJA.jpg "Nikolas Cruz, author of the Parkland massacre, is sentenced to life in prison")
The young author of the massacre in 2018 in a high school in Parklandin South Florida (United States), Nicholas Cruzwas formally sentenced this Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
the state magistrate elizabeth scherer pronounced in court in Fort Lauderdalenorth of Miami, a verdict already known, since last month the jury failed to reach the unanimity required by law to recommend the death penalty for Cruz, now 24.
LOOK: “He planned a massacre”: what the trial against Nikolas Cruz, the confessed author of the Parkland massacre, reveals
Three of the twelve jurors voted at the time against executing Crossclaiming that suffered from mental problemsso the young man’s life was spared, a verdict that provoked the indignation of a great majority of the relatives of the victims.
Cruz pleaded guilty last year to all the charges he faced after murdering 17 people with an assault rifle and injuring 17 others on February 14, 2018 at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school.of which he was a student.
Handcuffed and dressed in an orange uniform, Today the young man looked without showing any emotion at the magistrate while she read, at times with a broken voice, the 34 consecutive sentences that she imposed for each of the fatalities and injuriesand that Cruz is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in state prison.
“They are a wonderful strong community”you have each other, Scherer told the relatives of the victims present in the room shortly before reading the sentences, and after pointing out that their personal stories “will not be forgotten.”
The imposition of the sentence took place on the second day of hearings in which the relatives of the victims offered testimonies moved and indignant, and where for the first time they were able to address directly to Crosswho was harshly reproached for the devastation that the murder of their loved ones has produced in their lives.
“You are going to suffer and you are going to go through pain, a lot of pain,” Manuel Oliver, father of Joaquín Oliver, told Cruz. one of the fatalities in the shooting, and the last to give his testimony this Wednesday.
“From what I heard, child killers are very frowned upon and hated in prison. I welcome the day when I am told that you have been tortured for your heinous cold-blooded, premeditated and calculated murders, because you deserve nothing less.”Linda Beigel Schulman, the mother of slain teacher Scott Beigel, told him.
For many of the relatives, the conclusion of the judicial process implies at the same time the closure of a painful stage and the possibility of moving on with their lives, under the promise of never dedicating more time to the perpetrator of the massacre, as some of them pointed out. they.
“After today, no one will talk about this killer, he will be forgotten,” Annika Dworet, the mother of 17-year-old victim Nicholas Dworet, said in court. and who closed his speech by reading the names of his son and the other 16 murdered.
On the first day of hearings, Max Schachter, Alexander’s father, vented part of his anger against the defense’s argument, according to which the massacre had its origin in the brain damage Cruz suffered due to drug and alcohol use by part of her mother while she was pregnant.
“There is no brain damage here and it is an insult to the people who really have it,” exclaimed the father, who during his testimony gave a detailed recount of all the medical and psychological treatment that the young man received throughout his life. “(The shooting) was an act of pure evil,” he asserted.
once sentencedCruz will be transferred from the Broward County Jail where he is being held to a Florida Correctional System processing center and then to a maximum security prison. where at the beginning he will foreseeably be separated from the rest of the prisoners by virtue of a protection program.
At some point, possibly in a few years, prison officials will finally deem it safe to put him alongside the rest of the prison population.
Source: Elcomercio
I, Ronald Payne, am a journalist and author who dedicated his life to telling the stories that need to be said. I have over 7 years of experience as a reporter and editor, covering everything from politics to business to crime.
