‘Still have trouble breathing.’ Parkland school massacre survivors detail lasting injuries

Former Marjory Stoneman Douglas High freshman Anthony Borges, shot five times during a gunman’s rampage, recalled lying on the ground, unable to get up. In English and Spanish, he cried loudly for help.

Borges, then 15, grabbed his phone and dialed his mother and father to no avail. Borges thought he had been shot once, but he actually suffered five wounds. His wounds were so devastating, Borges told jurors on Wednesday, that he had to undergo extensive medical care.

“How many surgeries?” Broward prosecutors Mike Satz asked.

“Fourteen,” Borges said.

Jurors saw the damage firsthand. Borges, slim and lanky, pulled off his white Nike zip-up jacket to show his bare torso, and the deep scars on his back and the right side of his rib cage. Then he unbuttoned his athletic warm-up pants to reveal large unsightly scars on both legs.

Borges was one of a slew of former students who testified on Wednesday, many of them describing the myriad of injuries caused by the volleys of AR-15 bullets: a pierced lung, a shattered kneecap, mangled arms, among others.

Over a dozen students and teachers testified on the third day of the sentencing trial for Nikolas Cruz, the gunman who killed 17 students and staffers and wounded 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland on Feb. 14, 2018. The 12-person jury will eventually decide whether Cruz is executed or sentenced to life in prison; Cruz has already pleaded guilty to all of the murder and attempted murder counts.

The witnesses shared similar stories — how an unassuming Wednesday afternoon suddenly turned into chaos.

History and geography teacher Ernest Rospierski testified that when the fire alarm went off on the third floor, he gathered his class when the unmistakable sounds of gunfire sounded. When he saw the shooter approaching the mass of students, he tried pushing some into an alcove. He poked his head out and saw Nikolas Cruz about 20 feet away.

“That’s when I got grazed in the face,” he told jurors.

He helped his kids escape through a stairwell, then went inside and held the door. He felt someone pushing on it. “I thought it was a kid,” he said. “Thankfully, later, I found out it wasn’t.”

It had actually been Cruz.

Kyle Laman, who was part of a crowd of students fired upon in the third floor hallway, crumpled to the ground and looked down. “I see my ankle blown off — obliterated,” said Laman, who managed to run and escape even as Cruz continued firing at him.

Laman testified he underwent five or six surgeries to repair his mangled foot.

Teacher Ivy Schamis was teaching a Holocaust history class about the 1936 Olympics held in Nazi Germany. She recalled how student Nicholas Dworet excitedly recalled how the founder of the shoe company adidas made the sneakers worn by Black American Jesse Owens when he four gold medals.

“At that moment ... we heard very loud gunshots .going off in the hallway right outside the classroom door,” Schamis told jurors. “The students like stopped in our tracks and they flew out of their seats and they tried to find cover.”

As they all huddled, Cruz began firing into the classroom through a glass window panel, peppering the students with AR-15 bullets. In the aftermath, as the shots faded, Schamis saw that her students had been wounded — and two died, including Dworet.

“That’s Nicholas,” she said, crying, identifying a photo of Dworet. “My handsome boy.”

A few yards away, Nicholas’ parents sat in the gallery, mother Annika Dworet dabbing away tears.

Another teacher, Ronit Reoven, recalled that after her classroom was shot into, wounded students began moaning. One student, Ben Wikander, begged for water — she gave him what she had left in a bottle. A student also threw her a baby blanket she kept in her class. “To make a tourniquet for Ben’s arm because he was bleeding out,” Reoven said.

Like Borges, the other students recounted their injuries, some more grave than others.

Madeline Wilford was in her AP psychology class when the gunfire broke out, and she joined other students taking cover. She found herself wedged between the teacher’s desk and a podium. “I was in and out of consciousness,” she told jurors.

She remembered only flashes until she woke up the following night. She’d been shot four times, including in her arm and right lung. Wilford had to undergo three surgeries.

“I still have trouble breathing,” Wilford told the jury.

Samantha Mayor, a student who was shot in the left kneecap, told jurors that even four years later, she’s still hesitant about putting too much weight on that side.

“So I overcompensate on my right side,” Mayor said. “A lot of pain, a lot of soreness sometimes when I work out too much.”

Cruz’s defense team objected to prosecutor Satz asking the wounded victims about the long-term effects of their injuries. Broward Assistant Public Defender Tamara Curtis said it “wasn’t relevant” during Cruz’s penalty phase.

“He has admitted to shooting them with his firearm,” Curtis said.

Not so, said Broward prosecutor Carolyn McCann, who insisted that the lasting impact of the bullets was important to proving the many “aggravating factors” for why Cruz should be executed.

“These were not just graze wounds,” McCann said. “Some of these people escaped within an inch of their lives.”