Jury gets rare look at Parkland scene
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Roses brought to honor love on that Valentine's Day in 2018 lay withered, their dried and cracked petals scattered across classroom floors still smeared with the blood of victims gunned down by a former student more than four years ago.
Bullet holes pocked walls, and shards of glass from windows shattered by gunfire crunched underfoot at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where shooter Nikolas Cruz killed 14 students and three staff members. Nothing had been changed, except for the removal of the victims' bodies and some personal items.
Twelve jurors and 10 alternates who will decide whether Cruz gets the death penalty or life in prison made a rare visit to the massacre scene Thursday, retracing Cruz's steps through the three-story freshman building, known as “Building 12.” After they left, a group of journalists was allowed in for a much quicker first public view.
The sight was deeply unsettling: Pools of dried blood still stained classroom floors. A lock of hair rested on the floor. A single black rubber shoe was in a hallway. Browned rose petals were strewn across a hallway where six people died.
In the classroom of English teacher Dara Hass, where the most students were gunned down, there were essays about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager shot by the Taliban for going to school, and who has since become a global advocate for educational access for women and girls.
“A bullet went straight to her head but not her brain,” one student wrote. “We go to school every day of the week and we take it all for granted,” wrote another. "We cry and complain without knowing how lucky we are to be able to learn.”
Prosecutors, who rested their case following the jury's tour, hope the visit will help prove that Cruz's actions were cold, calculated, heinous and cruel; created a great risk of death to many people and “interfered with a government function” — all aggravating factors under Florida's capital punishment law.
Under Florida court rules, neither the judge nor the attorneys were allowed to speak to the jurors — and the jurors weren't allowed to converse with each other — when they retraced the path Cruz took on Feb. 14, 2018, as he moved from floor to floor, firing down hallways and into classrooms. Prior to the tour, the jurors had already seen surveillance video of the shooting and photographs of its aftermath.
The building has been sealed and was surrounded by a 15-foot chain-link fence wrapped in a privacy mesh screen fastened with zip ties. It looms ominously over the school and its teachers, staff and 3,300 students, and can be seen easily by anyone nearby. The Broward County school district plans to demolish it whenever prosecutors approve. For now, it is a court exhibit.
Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of first-degree murder; the trial is only to determine if he is sentenced to death or life without parole.
