Witnesses for Parkland school shooter’s defense said he struggled with other kids and faced delayed development

Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz was intellectually and bodily behind other kids as a toddler, which triggered him to isolate himself and hit and chunk to get what he needed, a daycare administrator and former neighbor testified Tuesday at his penalty trial for the mass homicide of 17 folks.

He remained socially and behaviorally stunted by way of elementary school, a particular schooling counselor additionally testified.

Cruz’s attorneys started the second day of their defense by constructing on testimony that his beginning mom’s cocaine and alcohol abuse throughout being pregnant left him severely mind broken, placing him on a highway that led to him murdering 14 college students and three workers members at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018.

They try to influence his jury to condemn him to life with out parole as an alternative of demise. Cruz, 23, pleaded responsible in October to the murders and the trial is just to find out his sentence.

Anne Fischer, who ran the daycare heart Cruz attended from about age 1, said he didn’t progress as quick as other kids and was smaller. She said whereas the other toddlers might ask for their water cups and use a spoon, Cruz couldn’t. She said he would fall down when he tried to run and his head and ears appeared disproportional to his physique.

“He isolated himself a lot. He would sit in the corner and observe,” Fischer said.

He pushed other kids as a result of he “didn’t know how to express himself,” she said. “If someone else had a toy that Nikolas wanted, he would just go up and grab the toy and hit the child’s hand to get the toy or the object. If a teacher was trying to work with him to get him to use his spoon or not his hand, he would hit the teacher’s hand away.”

She said Lynda Cruz, his adoptive mom, was loving towards Nikolas and tried to do the very best she might, however was sluggish to confess he had issues.

Patricia Devaney-Westerlind, who lived throughout the road from Lynda and Roger Cruz, said Lynda Cruz stored the household’s 4,500-square-foot dwelling immaculate and that she was nurturing to Nikolas and his youthful half-brother Zachary, whom the household additionally adopted.

“He was a cute little baby,” she said of Nikolas. “She would go and get him all these sailor outfits. She was just the happiest I ever saw her.”

But she noticed lots of the similar points that Fischer did — that other than her daughter, who was about eight months youthful than him, Nikolas Cruz couldn’t relate to other kids.

“I didn’t see anything that different until about maybe 18 months old. He’s very, very hyper. Very,” she said. “Always running around. He wasn’t talking, so if he wanted a toy, he would go after someone.”

Devaney-Westerlind said when the youngsters of the neighborhood would collect at her dwelling, Cruz would keep by himself and conceal behind the blinds.

“You’d see all the kids playing on the floor with different toys and he’d be somewhere else,” she said.

She said Cruz was a mattress and pants wetter till he was 6 or 7, which triggered other kids to select on him.

“He would get upset and he would start breaking their toys,” she said. “He would be very upset, he would clench his fists. He’d be very angry. It would go on for a while. He wouldn’t get over it.”

John Newnham, a particular schooling counselor who labored with Cruz from kindergarten by way of fifth grade, said he was often stored in small lessons with equally recognized college students. He said Cruz appeared fearful, would keep away from eye contact and did not like shaking fingers or other types of greeting like a fist bump.

When Roger Cruz died shortly after Nikolas entered kindergarten, he said, Lynda Cruz remained a loving mum or dad however turned overwhelmed by being a single mum or dad of two “very rambunctious” boys who had been “defiant and hard to control and given to conflict in the neighborhood.”

“She was reluctant to discipline the boys. She was somewhat fearful of them,” Newnham said.

He said Cruz lacked self-confidence and would say about himself, “I’m just stupid. I’m a freak.” He would tear up his writings and break his pencils.

“He was somewhat of a perfectionist,” Newnham said.

Lynda Cruz died in November 2017, about 4 months earlier than the capturing.

The defense is attempting to beat the prosecution’s case, which featured surveillance video of Cruz mowing down college students and workers 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 demise sentence, the jury have to be unanimous. If one juror votes for life, that will likely be his sentence.