Medical examiner’s difficult testimony on Parkland: AR-15 did massive damage to victims

Parkland high-school student Alaina Petty was just 14 years old, and weighed just 105 pounds.

And when a hail of rifle bullets cut her down in her classroom, the high-velocity bullets caused extensive damage to her body, an associate medical examiner testified on Friday, underscoring the devastating carnage wrought by the AR-15 fired by shooter Nikolas Cruz.

Jurors heard the difficult testimony — and viewed graphic autopsy photos — to conclude the first week of trial as prosecutors sought to illustrate the cruelty of Cruz’s targeted rampage through Marjory Stoneman Douglas High on Feb. 14, 2018. Cruz has already pleaded guilty, and the state is asking the jury to send the 23-year-old to Florida Death Row for execution.

On Friday, jurors and family members of victims heard from Associate Medical Examiner Dr. Iouri Boiko, who performed autopsies on a number of MSD students the day after the massacre, which killed 17 students and staff.

In Alaina’s case, she was shot four times. One fatal shot pierced her chest, then her heart, lungs and ribs. Another bullet entered through her ribs and did what high-velocity bullets are designed to do. “After that, the bullet was fragmented into multiple fragments that perforated the lungs, liver, kidney and exits on the left lateral side of the torso,” Boiko testified.

Cruz used a Smith & Wesson AR-15, a powerful semi-automatic rifle that has become the preferred weapon of recent mass shooters, including the teen who killed 21 at a school in Uvalde, Texas, and the gunman who fatally shot 10 in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. The Buffalo gunman left a manifesto saying he specifically chose the AR-15 because of its high-capacity magazines and ability to “kill effectively.”

Cruz fired 139 rounds of 5.56-and-.223-caliber bullets during the rampage. “This weapon will fire as quickly as you can pull the trigger,” Broward prosecutor Mike Satz told jurors during his opening statement.

(In a grim irony, Alaina — who wanted to join the military and had joined the school’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program — herself liked shooting the same weapon.)

Dr. Boiko described autopsies of four students, and the details were gut-wrenching. Photos seen by the jurors, and later reviewed by reporters, revealed the damage was massive: small entrance wounds, with massive, gaping exits wounds.

Some of the relatives of those murdered, listening in court, grimaced, shook their heads or put their hands to their faces as he explained the internal damage caused by the bullets.

▪ Martin Duque Anguiano, 14, appeared to try to shield himself, based on defensive wounds to the hands, Boiko said. The teen was shot eight times and would have stayed alive for a short time. “A couple minutes,” Boiko said.

▪ Carmen Schentrup, 16, suffered five wounds, including a lethal shot to the brain. Satz again asked about the significance of the high-powered bullets. “It’s very high energy,” Boiko said of the bullets. “The damage is very significant.”

▪ Meadow Pollack, 16, was shot nine times, at close range, including shots to the head and torso, which damaged lungs and spinal cord.

Also on Friday, jurors saw the spent AR-15 magazine clips found on the scene. To reinforce the impact of the bullets, a Broward crime-scene technician also showed jurors a laptop computer and a cell phone — both damaged by bullets — found on the floor of the school.

Until Friday, the first week of trial testimony has largely been marked by harrowing accounts from teachers and students who dodged bullets, suffered gunshot wounds and saw their classmates shot dead inside classrooms of the freshman building. The wounded students have also detailed a litany of injuries inflicted by the AR-15 bullets — shattered kneecaps, pierced lungs and close-call grazes to the head.

The 12-person jury has also seen numerous surveillance video clips, chronicling Cruz’s methodical attack, firing into classrooms through windows on the doors, sprinting to the third floor and gunning down terrified students gathered in the hallway.

On Thursday, jurors also heard about Cruz’s nonchalance after he escaped from the school. Jurors saw surveillance video of him buying a cherry-and-blue raspberry Icee at the Subway inside a nearby Walmart, sitting down in a booth in a McDonald’s occupied by MSD student John Wilford, who didn’t know Cruz.

The gunman kept asking him for a ride, even following Wilford to his mom’s car in the parking lot. Wilford declined. “I had a bad gut feeling about it,” testified Wilford — who would later learn that his sister, Madeline, was wounded in the attack by the very teen who’d been pestering him for a ride.

A police officer also testified about spotting Cruz, wearing a burgundy polo and a cap, walking down a residential street a couple of miles from the school.