Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz describes shooting victims for giving him 'nasty look'
Prosecutors resumed their rebuttal case in the sentencing trial of Nikolas Cruz on Monday morning, after court proceedings were put on hold last week due to Hurricane Ian.
Last Tuesday, Judge Elizabeth Scherer postponed the trial for three days as the Category 4 hurricane barrelled towards Florida, leaving more than 80 people dead.
The prosecution is seeking to show that Cruz, 24, is a sociopath who planned his attack and has no remorse for murdering 17 victims in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on 14 February 2018.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr Charles Scott previously testified how he diagnosed Cruz with antisocial personality disorder – a mental disorder where an individual consistently shows no regard for right and wrong.
Harrowing video footage from the psychiatrist’s interviews with Cruz showed the mass murderer nonchalantly describing how he tortured and killed animals from a young age.
The state is seeking to undermine Cruz’s defence that fetal alcohol spectrum disorders led him to carry out the Valentine’s Day massacre.
Jurors will decide whether to sentence Cruz to death or to life in prison.
Cruz calmly describes graphic details of murders
The video footage played in court on Monday morning shows Cruz calmly describing the graphic details of his murderous rampage.
Cruz described how he saw one of his victims – freshman student Jaime Guttenberg – “crawling” on the third floor and so “I shot her in the back”.
When asked why, Cruz told Dr Scott: “I told you, I wanted to kill as many people as I could... so I shot her in the back, I shot her twice.”
The gunman said he believed Peter Wang was the last person he shot, chillingly describing the horrific moment he shot the teenager in the head.
“His head blew up like a water balloon,” Cruz calmly told the psychiatrist.
Cruz claimed he ‘showed mercy’ to victims before murdering them over ‘nasty look'
Nikolas Cruz claimed that he “showed mercy” to two of his victims – before slaughtering them with his assault rifle because they gave him a “nasty look”.
Cruz murdered Cara Loughran,14, and Meadow Pollack, 18, as they tried to huddle together in the alcove of a classroom door on the third floor.
“I think I showed mercy to those two girls,” the killer told Dr Scott in the video interview played in court on Monday.
“I was going to walk away but they started to show nasty faces.”
When asked how he showed them mercy, he claimed he wasn’t going to shoot them but then decided to because of a “nasty look”.
“I was thinking about shooting them but I didn’t want to do it so was going to walk away down the hallway,” he claimed.
“But they gave me a nasty look,” he said, pulling down his Covid-19 face mask to pull a face.
Cruz then claimed he thought they would try to stop him. “I didn’t even aim or anything, I just shot,” he claimed.
Cruz also claimed that “the security guard” also “gave me a nasty look so I shot him in the head” – referring to athletic director Chris Hixon who died trying to save his students.
“Peter Wang also gave me a nasty look,” claimed Cruz, of the 15-year-old Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) cadet.
Court on lunchtime recess
The court is on lunchtime recess until 1.45pm ET.
Dr Scott will continue his expert testimony then.
Cruz reveals reason he ended massacre when he did
Nikolas Cruz revealed that the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School only came to an end because he “couldn’t find anyone to kill”.
In an interview in March 2022, Dr Scott is seen asking Cruz what led him to end the Valentine’s Day 2018 attack when he did.
“I couldn’t find anyone to kill,” Cruz replied.
Cruz told Dr Scott how he tried to shoot through the windows of the freshman building and smash the glass so that he could open fire on the crowds of terrified students evacuating the school.
But, he was unable to break through the glass.
As a result, he left his AR-15 and tactical vest on the ground of the third floor of the building and fled the school among the crowd.
Cruz reveals reason he chose Valentine’s Day for attack
Nikolas Cruz revealed to Dr Scott his reasons for choosing Valentine’s Day for the mass shooting.
Dr Scott told jurors that Cruz chose the holiday specifically because the day is “difficult” for him because “he has no one to love and no one to love him”.
Jurors see harrowing videos Cruz made before attack
Jurors were shown harrowing videos Cruz made in the days before the mass shooting, where he described his plans to kill 20 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
In one of the videos, Cruz is off camera and is heard saying: “Today is the day... all of the kids in school will run in fear and hide... I am nothing, I am no one, my life is nothing.”
“With the power of my AR you will know who I am,” he says.
He calmly describes his plan to get an Uber to the school and then carry out the massacre.
In one of the videos, he faces the camera and calmly details the key plans for the attack, laughing about murdering people.
“My name is Nik,” he says at the start.
Once he arrives at the school, he casually says “then I shoot people down at the main courtyrard... and then people will die.’
“My goal is 20 people, my location is Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida. It’s going to be a big event,” he says.
“When you see me on the news you’ll all know who I am,” Cruz says, breaking into a smile and laugh.
“You’re all going to die,” he says, before making a shooting sound to the camera.
Dr Scott testified that Cruz is “calm, organised, speaking slowly” in the videos which were made days before the shooting.
Video shows Cruz casually describing preparations night before massacre
Video played in court shows Cruz casually describing his preparations the night before the massacre.
Psychiatrist Dr Scott interviewed Cruz over three days in March as part of his examination of the school shooter.
In an interview on 2 March 2022, Cruz tells Dr Scott how he practiced the shooting in a backyard on the night of 13 February 2018.
When Dr Scott asked what he meant when he said he was “figuring out the recoil” and “sighting in” with his AR-15 in preparation, Cruz offered to draw what he meant.
“Yeh, I’m trying to make you understand,” he said to the expert, as he scribbled on some paper.
Cruz also said that he planned ahead to wear his Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School JRTOC polo shirt for the attack “to disguise myself so I don’t draw attention”.
Cruz says he thought about shootings from age 13 or 14
In the 2 March 2022 interview with Dr Scott, Cruz revealed that he first started thinking about mass shootings from the age of 13 or 14.
He said the thoughts would “come and go” – they would “pop up in my mind and just disappear the next”.
Cruz said that he became interested in mass shootings by reading books, watching violent videos such as war videos and a documentary on the Columbine massacre.
“This was not a spur of the moment decision. This had been planned out for months,” said Dr Scott.
Video shows Cruz describing how he researched mass shooters
Chilling video played in court shows Nikolas Cruz describing how he researched past mass shootings as part of his plans for the Valentine’s Day 2018 massacre.
Psychiatrist Dr Scott interviewed Cruz over three days in March as part of his examination of the school shooter.
In an interview on 2 March 2022, Dr Scott is seen asking Cruz is he looked into other shootings.
Cruz confirmed he did and detailed his “research”.
“I did my own research. I looked up on Wikipedia, I studied mass murderers and how they did it,” he said nonchalantly.
“Their plan and what they got and what they used.”
Cruz listed off several mass shootings including Columbine and Virgina Tech and how he learned what type of guns the killers used in those cases.
When asked if he learned from his research, Cruz responded that he had.
“They kept distance away from people and they went fast as possible, and the police didn’t do anything,” he said.
He added that he learned that “if I did it on a school campus the police are not going to do anything” and that he would have “a small window” of time - “maybe 20 minutes”.
Cruz’s social media shows his planning for attack
Dr Scott pointed to Nikolas Cruz’s social media history to show the mass shooter’s planning for the Valentine’s Day 2018 attack.
On 2 September 2017, Cruz left a comment on YouTube reading: “I just want to kill people.”
Later that month on 24 September, he wrote: “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”
Days later, he wrote: “My life sucks, I failed high school. I’m going to go on a killing rampage.”
This was all before the death of his adoptive mother.
The expert said that planned aggression is a characteristic of antisocial personality disorder – but not FASD.
