Mom did crack, drank while pregnant, Parkland shooter’s jailed sister testifies

Danielle Woodard hadn’t seen her baby biological brother in person since Sept. 24, 1998, when he was born at the hospital.

They reunited, in a way, almost 24 years later.

Woodard, who herself is in jail in Miami awaiting trial in a carjacking case, took the witness stand on Monday, testifying on behalf of younger brother Nikolas Cruz, who is facing the death penalty as he’s being sentenced for the February 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland.

“I held him. He was full of life, moving around a lot. I was looking at him,” an emotional Woodard told jurors. “He was looking back at me. He was real squirmy. I looked at my mom and I said, ‘Can we keep him?’ ”

The brother and sister shared only that one brief and happy moment together. But the defense viewed her testimony as crucial to establishing its contention that Cruz’s brain was damaged before he even came into the world by his biological mother Brenda Woodard’s drug and alcohol abuse. His sister told jurors about Brenda’s constant drinking while pregnant, her crack-cocaine use and how she’d arranged for Cruz to be adopted by a Parkland family at birth.

Woodard remembered her mother snapped at her question in the hospital room.

“Brenda screamed at me and at my grandmother, ‘Get her out of here,’ because I asked if we could keep him,” Woodard said. She added the adoption was for Cruz “to have a better life, for him to take a different path.”

Two decades later, both brother and sister’s paths have led them both to jail awaiting the finality of their criminal cases.

Woodard testified despite an objection from her latest defense attorney, Miami-Dade Assistant Public Defender Zachary Rosenberg. He came to court Monday to ask the judge to stop her from testifying, saying he had concerns about her incriminating herself in her pending case.

Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer denied the request, and a private attorney was later retained for Woodard, whose testimony was highly anticipated. In the end, Woodard was not asked to talk about her carjacking case.

Ruddy-complexioned and copper-haired like her brother, Woodard entered the courtroom dressed in a brown jail jumpsuit. She smiled at Cruz, dabbing her eyes. Cruz, without his normal courtroom medical mask, appeared more alert than normal, almost nervous, ruffling his hair, shifting in his seat, resting his chin on his hands.

As they waited for jurors to assemble, in a quiet courtroom, Cruz and Woodard locked gazes. He nodded at her.

“Are you nervous?” Assistant Broward Public Defender Tamara Curtis asked as testimony got underway.

“Overwhelmed,” Woodard said.

Her testimony was pained. She teared up when shown a ragged, faded photo of Cruz and her youngest brother, Zachary, both of whom were adopted by Lynda and Roger Cruz of Parkland.

Woodard paused often, and sighed. Her disdain for her mother was clear — she called her “Brenda,” never mother.

Woodard remembered being around 11 years old going to live with Brenda in a Fort Lauderdale efficiency. As they stopped to buy grape-flavored Cisco wine at the store, Woodard noticed her mother’s baby bump.

“She looked at me, and said, ‘I got raped,’ and she took another swig, turned up the radio, and we drove to the efficiency,” Woodard told jurors. “Nikolas was developing in her polluted womb,” she said.

Woodard testified that she would help her mother smuggle in clean urine for probation drug tests, and “junkies” were often at their small efficiency getting high. Once, she said, Brenda forced her own mother — Woodard’s grandmother — to strip naked looking for money to go buy drugs. Eventually, the family was evicted, and Woodard ran away from her mother’s care.

Brenda also didn’t appear to be gaining pregnancy weight.

“She always wore the same Docker shorts and baggy T-shirts,” Woodard said. “That’s how I remember Brenda.”

Woodard cycled in and out of foster homes, often changing schools in Miami. She began her own drinking around 12 years old. She acknowledged she’d been convicted of 16 felonies, and done two stints in prison.

“In many ways, she just introduced me to a life that no child should ever be introduced to,” she said.

Broward prosecutor Jeff Marcus sought to draw the distinction between her troubled life — and the seeming charmed life of her brother, who went to live in a palatial Parkland home with a swimming pool.

“That would have been a dream for you, wouldn’t it?” Marcus said.

“Yes,” she replied.

Woodard testified that she didn’t know Cruz was behind the Parkland school massacre until 2018, when a member of the defense team came to see her in prison.

”That’s when I found out that was my baby brother,” she said.