Parkland shooter’s deadly rampage is described on penalty trial’s first day as parents of victims are moved to tears

Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz’s 2018 massacre at a Florida high school was described in grisly detail by a prosecutor Monday as a much-delayed penalty trial began, moving the parents of victims to tears.

Prosecutor Mike Satz said Cruz shot students at their desks and others as they ran away during the rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 people dead. Cruz shot some of the victims again after wounding them with an initial bullet, Satz said.

The attack occurred three days after Cruz laid out his plans for the shooting in a video, Satz told the 12-member jury at the Broward County Judicial Complex in Fort Lauderdale.

“This is what the defendant said: ‘Hello, my name is Nik. I’m going to be the next school shooter of 2018. My goal is at least 20 people with an AR-15 and some tracer rounds. It’s going to be a big event, and when you see me on the news, you’ll know who I am. You’re all going to die. Ah yeah, I can’t wait,’” Satz said Monday.

Satz is seeking the death penalty for the 23-year-old Cruz, who pleaded guilty to 17 counts of first-degree murder last October, nearly four years after the February 2018 shooting.

Jurors will decide whether Cruz is sentenced to the death penalty or life behind bars at the end of the trial.

Nikolas Cruz at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on June 28, 2022. (Amy Beth Bennett/)

The mother of one victim left the courtroom in tears Monday. She was one of several parents who broke down during the penalty trial’s first day.

Cruz’s lawyers opted not to give an opening statement, saying they’ll instead do so when it’s their turn to present in the coming weeks.

Prosecutors on Monday called former Stoneman Douglas student Danielle Gilbert to the witness stand. Gilbert said she was in a room where one student was killed and three others were wounded in the shooting.

“We were sitting like sitting ducks,” Gilbert told the jury. “We had no way to protect ourselves.”

Cruz’s trial was originally scheduled to take place in 2020, before postponements caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and other legal matters pushed it back.

Fourteen students and three employees of the school were shot dead. Parents of victims have advocated for Cruz to be executed, including Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter Alyssa was among those who died.

“I hope for swift action to hold him responsible,” Alhadeff said, according to the Associated Press.

A jury of seven men and five women were selected for the penalty trial last month. Ten alternates were also chosen.

Suzanne Devine Clark at a memorial at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2019 on the one-year anniversary of the shooting. (Wilfredo Lee/)

The jurors would need to vote unanimously for Cruz to receive the death penalty. Each juror will vote 17 times at the end of the trial, with each vote being for one of the victims killed.

No other mass shooting with at least 17 deaths has reached a trial in the United States before. The gunmen either died by suicide or were killed by law enforcement in each of the previous occasions.

A trial has yet to take place for a man charged in a 2019 shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, that left 23 dead.

With News Wire Services