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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Four years earlier than Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 individuals at a Florida highschool, therapists at one other college wrote a letter to his psychiatrist saying he was fixated on weapons and dreamed of killing others and being coated in blood, testimony at his penalty trial confirmed Thursday.
Dr. Brett Negin, testifying for the protection, stated he by no means obtained it.
Negin and one other psychiatrist who handled Cruz within the decade main as much as the Feb. 14, 2018, bloodbath at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School testified throughout Thursday’s abbreviated courtroom session concerning the numerous medicines he was given for consideration deficit hyperactivity dysfunction and different points. Both stated underneath cross-examination by prosecutors they by no means noticed something that might have led them to consider he was succesful of mass homicide.
But Negin, who handled Cruz from 2012 into August 2017, was then proven by the protection a June 2014 letter written to him by a psychiatrist and therapist at Cross Creek School, a campus attended by college students with emotional and behavioral issues.
Dr. Nyrma N. Ortiz and therapist Rona O’Connor Kelly’s two-page letter addressed to Negin says Cruz, then 15, was experiencing excessive temper swings, including, “He is usually very irritable and reactive.” They stated he’s “inappropriately” obsessed with weapons and the navy, defiant, verbally aggressive towards his academics, paranoid, and locations the blame on others for the issues he creates.
“At home, he continues to be aggressive and destructive with minimal provocation,” the 2 wrote. He destroyed a tv after dropping a online game, punched holes in partitions, and used sharp objects to chop up the furnishings and carve holes within the lavatory. He had a hatchet that he used to cut a lifeless tree within the yard, however his mom reported she may now not discover it.
Cruz shared at college, “he dreams of killing others and is covered in blood.”
The two stated he had been assessed for hospitalization, however that by no means occurred. They stated they had been writing Negin so he may alter Cruz’s remedy.
Negin testified Thursday he by no means obtained the letter, and nobody adopted up with him when he did not reply. He stated Cross Creek’s typical process if the workers was having issues with one of his sufferers was to have a counselor come to his workplace with the coed and oldsters to debate the problem.
“This did not happen one time with Mr. Cruz,” Negin stated.
Negin additionally testified that in 2013 he wrote a letter for Cruz’s mom supporting his voluntary hospitalization. That additionally by no means occurred.
Office and residential numbers for Ortiz had been disconnected. O’Connor Kelly didn’t instantly reply to an electronic mail Thursday in search of remark.
The protection is attempting to point out that Cruz, 23, had a protracted historical past of psychological well being points that had been by no means absolutely handled. He pleaded responsible in October to the murders — the trial is simply to determine whether or not he’s sentenced to loss of life or life with out parole.
The protection is attempting to beat the prosecution’s case, which ended earlier this month. It featured surveillance video of Cruz, then 19, mowing down college students and workers with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle as he stalked a three-story constructing for seven minutes, pictures of the aftermath, and a jury go to to the constructing.
For Cruz to obtain a loss of life sentence, the seven-man, five-woman jury have to be unanimous. If one juror votes for all times, that will likely be his sentence.
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