FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Jurors within the penalty trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz noticed proof Wednesday of his rising obsession to commit a bloodbath, seeing internet posts and searches about mass killings within the months earlier than he murdered 17 individuals at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
In an impassive monotone, Broward County sheriff’s Detective Nick Masters learn tons of of searches and feedback Cruz made beginning seven months earlier than the Feb. 14, 2018, bloodbath as prosecutors attempt to show he deliberate it.
They included searches in regards to the mass shootings at Columbine High School in 1999, a movie show within the Denver suburbs in 2012, Virginia Tech University in 2007, a South Carolina Black church in 2015 and a Las Vegas nation music live performance in 2017.
In feedback, Cruz praised Elliot Rodger, who killed six individuals in 2014 earlier than taking his personal life and has change into a touchstone amongst disturbed younger males who establish as “involuntary celibates” or “incels” as a result of ladies will not date them.
In posts on YouTube, Cruz wrote “I wanna kill people,” “I’m going to be a professional school shooter,” “I have no problem shooting a girl in the chest” and “No mercy.” He wrote “It makes me happy to see people die” adopted by a smiley face emoji and “I love to see the familys suffer.”
About two months earlier than his assault, Cruz turned his focus towards Stoneman Douglas, the school he periodically attended earlier than he was expelled in early 2017. He researched the school’s working hours and pulled up a campus map.
Finally, lower than 24 hours earlier than the bloodbath, he looked for, “How long does it take a cop to show up at a school shooting?” He fled the school after seven minutes.
Some of the seven males and 5 ladies on the jury and their 10 alternates scribbled madly as Cruz’s phrases have been posted on video screens in entrance of them. Victims’ mother and father and relations within the gallery audibly gasped as they noticed the posts, with some shaking their heads.
Under questioning by Cruz’s legal professional, Masters mentioned all of the posts have been in public boards and lots of underneath his personal identify. He mentioned that, to his information, Google and YouTube had no methodology for finding and reporting such posts and searches.
Cruz, 23, pleaded responsible to 17 counts of first-degree homicide in October, that means the jury will determine solely whether or not he’s sentenced to loss of life or life with out parole. The taking pictures left 14 college students, a trainer, the athletic director and an assistant soccer coach useless.
Earlier Wednesday, a jail guard testified that Cruz attacked him with little warning 9 months after the bloodbath and tried to wrestle away his electrical stun gun.
Jurors noticed a surveillance video of the Nov. 13, 2018, brawl with Broward County sheriff’s Sgt. Raymond Beltran, who was supervising Cruz’s recreation interval within the remoted space the place he’s stored.
The guard testified that after he instructed Cruz to stroll correctly on his slippers, Cruz flashed each center fingers after which charged him, flipping the guard onto the bottom. Beltran was in a position to flip Cruz over they usually wrestled over Beltran’s Taser, which Cruz was in a position to pull from its holster.
He mentioned he feared Cruz would use it towards him after which “he could do whatever he wants to me.”
The Taser discharged, however the probes missed each of them. Beltran regained management of the Taser and used it to punch Cruz, staggering him. Cruz then bought on the bottom, was handcuffed and put again into his cell. Beltran suffered no critical accidents.
With the trial now in its second week, the jury has seen terrifying video of the assault, and heard from traumatized survivors and law enforcement officials who rushed into the nightmarish scene inside a three-story classroom constructing. They have examined ugly post-mortem and crime scene photographs.
They additionally noticed video depicting Cruz’s nonchalance as he walked to a sandwich store to purchase a drink after which visited a McDonald’s simply minutes after he fled the school. On Monday, they noticed the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle Cruz fired greater than 150 occasions.
This is the deadliest mass taking pictures in U.S. historical past to achieve trial. Nine U.S. gunmen apart from Cruz who killed at the very least 17 individuals died throughout or instantly after their shootings, both by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in a tenth, the 2019 slaying of 23 individuals at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, is awaiting trial.
Prosecutors mentioned Wednesday that they plan to finish their case subsequent week after the jury visits the constructing the place the bloodbath occurred. It has been sealed off since shortly after the taking pictures and its partitions and flooring stay blood-stained and bullet-pocked, with rotted Valentine’s Day flowers and deflated balloons strewn about.
After a one-week break, the trial will resume with a protection case that can deal with Cruz’s life, together with his delivery mom’s ingesting throughout being pregnant, his lengthy historical past of emotional and psychological issues, his alleged sexual abuse and the deaths of his adopted mother and father. The prosecution will then current a rebuttal case.
When jurors get the case, in all probability in October or November, they are going to vote 17 occasions, as soon as for every of the victims, on whether or not to advocate capital punishment.
For every loss of life sentence, the jury have to be unanimous or the sentence for that sufferer is life. The jurors are instructed that to vote for loss of life, the prosecution’s aggravating circumstances for that sufferer should, of their judgment, “outweigh” the protection’s mitigators. A juror can even vote for all times out of mercy for Cruz. During jury choice, the panelists mentioned underneath oath that they’re able to voting for both sentence.
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Associated Press reporter Freida Frisaro in Miami contributed to this report.