FORT LAUDERDALE – During Wednesday’s proceedings at the sentencing trial for Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz, it was announced that the jury would tour the building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School building where the massacre took place.
The jury will be taken to the campus by bus and allowed to see the classrooms where the shootings happened in February 2018. They will not be allowed to touch anything or ask any questions. They will then be taken back to the courthouse.
Cruz will not be in attendance.
Wednesday was the third day of victim impact testimony in the sentencing trial.
Cruz has already pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. The current phase of the trial is to determine his sentence: Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, while Cruz’s defense attorneys are asking the jury for a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
To recommend a death sentence, jurors must be unanimous. If they do so, the judge could choose to follow the recommendation or sentence him to life instead.
Much of the testimony — particularly from the parents of the 14 students killed — focused on all the things the victims and their families will never get to do and the irreparable damage to their everyday lives.
“Our family is broken. There is this constant emptiness,” said Max Schachter, the father of 14-year-old Alex, who loved chocolate chip cookies, playing the trombone, and video games.
“I feel I can’t truly be happy if I smile,” Schachter said. “I know that behind that smile is the sharp realization that part of me will always be sad and miserable because Alex isn’t here.”
Tony Montalto, who lost his daughter Gina, said he realized he was wearing the same clothes he wore the last time he took her to a father-daughter dance.
“I was so happy to be her father,” Montalto said.
“Gina didn’t come home from school that day,” said Jennifer Montalto.
She and her husband described their daughter, who was 14, as a kind girl, an avid reader who was quick to volunteer and who once saved a young boy who fell into the pool where she was playing.
Now there’s an empty seat at their table, Jennifer Montalto said, a bedroom where her daughter will never sleep and a front door she will never walk through — each prompts a feeling of “unspeakable loss.”
Where their house was once filled with laughter, Anthony Montalto said, “now there’s a deafening silence broken only by the deep sighs and soft sobbing that accompany what used to be happy memories of my children playing.”
Isabel Dalu, a close friend of the family of Cara Loughran, told the court about all the things the 14-year-old was looking forward to when she was gunned down: Her birthday was a week later, and she’d be old enough to get her learner’s permit. She’d recently started Irish dancing again, and she was excited to dance in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. The family had a trip to Ireland planned for that summer to visit family.
“She dreamed of her first date, her first kiss, and falling in love,” Dalu said. “Cara dreamed of going to homecoming and prom, she dreamed of graduating at the top of her class with all of her loved ones watching.”
“But Cara didn’t make it to any of these milestones,” she added.
To make their decision, jurors will hear prosecutors and defense attorneys argue aggravating factors and mitigating circumstances — reasons Cruz should or should not be executed. Victim impact statements add another layer, giving the families and friends of the victims their own day in court, though the judge told the jury the statements are not meant to be weighed as aggravating factors.