One teacher recalled how a boy in her Holocaust studies class answered a question correctly seconds before he became one of the 17 people killed during the school shooter's rampage four years ago. Other teachers shared other heartbreaking stories during their testimony on Wednesday in Nikolas Cruz's penalty trial.
Star swimmer Nick Dworet accurately identified Adolf Dassler as the founder of the Adidas shoe firm when Ivy Schamis, then a teacher at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was guiding pupils through a conversation about the 1936 Olympics in National Socialist Germany. The competing Puma brand was formed by Dassler's brother, he continued.
The moment Cruz entered her classroom, they heard the first gunshots in the first-floor hallway of the three-story structure, and Cruz started firing his semi-automatic rifle through the glass on the door.
Schamis testified, dabbing her eyes with a tissue, "It was actually seconds later that the barrel of that AR-15 suddenly ambushed our classroom." It immediately passed through the glass panel and started shooting all over the place. It was a booming noise. really frightful These young people who really shouldn't be going through this kept coming to mind.
She claimed that while trying to hide under furniture, the pupils responded bravely and maturely while waiting to be rescued. In her class, Dworet and Helena Ramsay, both 17 years old, were slain and three others were injured.
She started crying as soon as she saw their photographs.
Helena Ramsay is my girl, she remarked. "What a lovely boy, Nicholas Dworet."
In the classroom across the hall, where three pupils were killed and numerous others were injured, Alexander, the brother of Dworet, was grazed by a bullet.
Cruz, 23, admitted guilt in October to 17 charges of first-degree murder related to the massacre on February 14, 2018. For the nation's bloodiest mass shooting to go before a jury, they must decide whether the former Stoneman Douglas student should receive a death sentence or a life sentence without the possibility of parole. The trial is anticipated to go at least through October.
Nine more shooters who contributed to at least 17 fatalities perished during or right after their attacks, either by suicide or police gunfire. In El Paso, Texas, a Walmart was the scene of the murder of 23 people in 2019. The suspect is currently in court.
Schamis' testimony was followed by that of Ronit Reoven, who was presenting a lesson on Sigmund Freud to her advanced psychology class when Cruz began shooting into the adjacent classroom, also through the door's window.
She reported hearing "several gunshots." "They were really noisy. Boing Boing Boing Boing! The minute I froze, the pupils leaped from their chairs. Naturally, they were alarmed and terrified.
Reoven claimed that she and the pupils were huddled on the ground next to her desk as injured students sobbed and moaned. To stem the bleeding from a boy's arm, she used a blanket that was typically used to cover her coffee maker as a tourniquet. Another boy stopped a girl's chest bleeding with his jacket. A girl who was shot in the knee seemed to be doing okay. Carmen Schentrup, 16, was, however, lying face down in a bloody pool.
Reoven remarked, "I knew she was probably gone.
When Cruz's gunfire on the first floor set off the fire alarm, Stacey Lippel was instructing creative writing on the third level while Ernest Rospierski was in charge of study hall. They guided their students down the corridor to flee without realizing there was a shooting going on below them.
Gunshots could be heard as the yelling kids started to return up the stairs.
Scott Beigel, the teacher in the adjacent class, and she, according to Lippel, instantly reopened their doors and began bringing the pupils back inside. Cruz came out of the stairway at that point, "splaying the rifle back and forth, shot after shot after shot," she recalled. It was unabated.
Beigel was shot to death, according to Lippel, who claimed to have entered her room and shut the door.
Veronica Steel, a former student of Beigel's, testified that his presence prevented the door from closing, which made the other pupils in the room nervous that Cruz would enter.
It was horrible. We were at a loss for what to do, she claimed.
When Cruz briefly stopped firing, Rospierski helped pupils who had congregated in the alcove outside his classroom to evacuate down a stairwell despite suffering minor gunshot wounds to the head and hip.
A surveillance video shown to the jury reveals that two injured pupils, Cara Loughran, 14, and Meadow Pollack, 18, remained behind and were found laying on the ground. Cruz used a second blast to kill them. Joaquin Oliver, a 17-year-old who was wounded and laying in front of a restroom, was later slain by him.
Jaime Guttenberg, 14, and Peter Wang, 15, both members of the fleeing group, were struck shortly before they arrived at the staircase door and potential safety. Both passed away, Wang after Cruz fired a second volley at him.
When the case is finally presented to the jury, they will vote 17 times—once for each of the victims—to determine whether to recommend the death penalty.
If there is a tie, the victim will get a life sentence instead of the mandatory death penalty. The jury is instructed that in order for them to vote for execution, the aggravating factors for the victim presented by the prosecution must, in their opinion, "outweigh" the mitigating factors presented by the defense. A juror may even choose life in order to show Cruz mercy. The panel members testified under oath that they are capable of voting for either penalty during jury selection.
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