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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Jurors within the penalty trial of Florida faculty shooter Nikolas Cruz noticed proof Wednesday of his rising obsession to commit a bloodbath, seeing web posts and searches about mass killings within the months earlier than he murdered 17 individuals at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty.
In an impassive monotone, Broward County sheriff’s Detective Nick Masters learn a whole lot of searches and feedback Cruz made beginning seven months earlier than the Feb. 14, 2018, bloodbath as prosecutors attempt to show he deliberate it.
They included searches in regards to the mass shootings at Columbine Excessive Faculty in 1999, a movie show within the Denver suburbs in 2012, Virginia Tech College in 2007, a South Carolina Black church in 2015 and a Las Vegas nation music live performance in 2017.
In feedback, Cruz praised Elliot Rodger, who killed six individuals in 2014 earlier than taking his personal life and has turn out to be a touchstone amongst disturbed younger males who determine as “involuntary celibates” or “incels” as a result of girls gained’t date them.
In posts on YouTube, Cruz wrote “I wanna kill individuals,” “I’m going to be knowledgeable faculty shooter,” “I’ve no drawback taking pictures a lady within the chest” and “No mercy.” He wrote “It makes me glad to see individuals die” adopted by a smiley face emoji and “I like to see the familys endure.”
Fred Guttenberg, left, is proven in the course of the penalty section of the trial of Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty shooter Nikolas Cruz on the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, July 27, 2022. Guttenberg’s daughter, Jaime, was killed within the 2018 shootings. Cruz beforehand plead responsible to all 17 counts of premeditated homicide and 17 counts of tried homicide within the 2018 shootings. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Solar Sentinel through AP, Pool)
Picture: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Mike Stocker
Max and Caryn Schachter, proper, with Tom Hoyer, third from proper, stand with members of the family of victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty shootings in the course of the penalty section of the trial of confessed killer Nikolas Cruz on the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, July 27, 2022. The Schachter’s son, Alex, and Hoyer’s son, Luke, have been killed within the 2018 shootings. Cruz beforehand plead responsible to all 17 counts of premeditated homicide and 17 counts of tried homicide within the 2018 shootings. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Solar Sentinel through AP, Pool)
Picture: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Mike Stocker
Nikolas Cruz is being tried within the penalty section of his trial on the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, July 27, 2022. Cruz beforehand plead responsible to all 17 counts of premeditated homicide and 17 counts of tried homicide within the 2018 shootings. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Solar Sentinel through AP, Pool)
Picture: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Mike Stocker
Nikolas Cruz is being tried within the penalty section of his trial on the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, July 27, 2022. Cruz beforehand plead responsible to all 17 counts of premeditated homicide and 17 counts of tried homicide within the 2018 shootings. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Solar Sentinel through AP, Pool)
Picture: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Mike Stocker
Nikolas Cruz is being tried within the penalty section of his trial on the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, July 27, 2022. Cruz beforehand plead responsible to all 17 counts of premeditated homicide and 17 counts of tried homicide within the 2018 shootings. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Solar Sentinel through AP, Pool)
Picture: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Mike Stocker
Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty shooter Nikolas Cruz holds his head in courtroom in the course of the penalty section of his trial on the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, July 27, 2022. Cruz beforehand plead responsible to all 17 counts of premeditated homicide and 17 counts of tried homicide within the 2018 shootings. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Solar Sentinel through AP, Pool)
Picture: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Mike Stocker
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About two months earlier than his assault, Cruz turned his focus towards Stoneman Douglas, the varsity he periodically attended earlier than he was expelled in early 2017. He researched the varsity’s working hours and pulled up a campus map.
Lastly, lower than 24 hours earlier than the bloodbath, he looked for, “How lengthy does it take a cop to point out up at a college taking pictures?” He fled the varsity after seven minutes.
A number of the seven males and 5 girls on the jury and their 10 alternates scribbled madly as Cruz’s phrases have been posted on video screens in entrance of them. Victims’ dad and mom and members of the family within the gallery audibly gasped as they noticed the posts, with some shaking their heads.
Beneath questioning by Cruz’s lawyer, Masters stated all of the posts have been in public boards and plenty of beneath his personal identify. He stated that, to his information, Google and YouTube had no methodology for finding and reporting such posts and searches.
Cruz, 23, pleaded responsible to 17 counts of first-degree homicide in October, which means the jury will resolve solely whether or not he’s sentenced to demise or life with out parole. The taking pictures left 14 college students, a instructor, the athletic director and an assistant soccer coach useless.
Earlier Wednesday, a jail guard testified that Cruz attacked him with little warning 9 months after the bloodbath and tried to wrest away his electrical stun gun.
Jurors noticed a surveillance video of the Nov. 13, 2018, brawl with Broward County sheriff’s Sgt. Raymond Beltran, who was supervising Cruz’s recreation interval within the remoted space the place he’s saved.
The guard testified that after he advised Cruz to stroll correctly on his slippers, Cruz flashed each center fingers after which charged him, flipping the guard onto the bottom. Beltran was capable of flip Cruz over they usually wrestled over Beltran’s Taser, which Cruz was capable of pull from its holster.
He stated he feared Cruz would use it in opposition to him after which “he may do no matter he desires to me.”
The Taser discharged, however the probes missed each of them. Beltran regained management of the Taser and used it to punch Cruz, staggering him. Cruz then obtained on the bottom, was handcuffed and put again into his cell. Beltran suffered no severe accidents.
With the trial now in its second week, the jury has seen terrifying video of the assault, and heard from traumatized survivors and law enforcement officials who rushed into the nightmarish scene inside a three-story classroom constructing. They’ve examined grotesque post-mortem and crime scene pictures.
Additionally they noticed video depicting Cruz’s nonchalance as he walked to a sandwich store to purchase a drink after which visited a McDonald’s simply minutes after he fled the varsity. On Monday, they noticed the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle Cruz fired greater than 150 occasions.
That is the deadliest mass taking pictures in U.S. historical past to achieve trial. 9 U.S. gunmen apart from Cruz who killed not less than 17 individuals died throughout or instantly after their shootings, both by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in a 10th, the 2019 slaying of 23 individuals at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, is awaiting trial.
Prosecutors stated Wednesday that they plan to finish their case subsequent week after the jury visits the constructing the place the bloodbath occurred. It has been sealed off since shortly after the taking pictures and its partitions and flooring stay blood-stained and bullet-pocked, with rotted Valentine’s Day flowers and deflated balloons strewn about.
After a one-week break, the trial will resume with a protection case that may give attention to Cruz’s life, together with his delivery mom’s ingesting throughout being pregnant, his lengthy historical past of emotional and psychological issues, his alleged sexual abuse and the deaths of his adopted dad and mom. The prosecution will then current a rebuttal case.
When jurors get the case, most likely in October or November, they are going to vote 17 occasions, as soon as for every of the victims, on whether or not to advocate capital punishment.
For every demise sentence, the jury should be unanimous or the sentence for that sufferer is life. The jurors are advised that to vote for demise, the prosecution’s aggravating circumstances for that sufferer should, of their judgment, “outweigh” the protection’s mitigators. A juror can even vote for all times out of mercy for Cruz. Throughout jury choice, the panelists stated beneath oath that they’re able to voting for both sentence.
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Related Press reporter Freida Frisaro in Miami contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Related Press. All rights reserved. This materials will not be revealed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed with out permission.
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