Nikolas Cruz has revealed that the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School only came to an end because he “couldn’t find anyone to kill” as he claimed that he “showed mercy” to some of his victims.
Disturbing video footage was played in Broward County Court on Monday, showing the 24-year-old mass murderer’s interviews with forensic psychiatrist Dr Charles Scott in March 2022.
In the footage, Cruz is seen calmly detailing how he murdered 17 students and staff at the high school as well as his detailed preparations in the lead-up to the Valentine’s Day 2018 attack.
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”.
“I think I showed mercy to those two girls,” the killer told Dr Scott.
“I was going to walk away but they started to show nasty faces.”
Cruz did not name the victims he was referring to but he 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.
When asked how he had shown them mercy, Cruz 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 mask to pull a face as an example.
Cruz also 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” – appearing to refer to athletic director Chris Hixon who died trying to save his students.
“Peter Wang also gave me a nasty look,” Cruz also claimed of the 15-year-old Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) cadet.
While he claimed so-called “nasty looks” spurred him on to kill some of his victims, this appeared to contradict other comments he made to the expert witness.
Cruz calmly described graphic details of his murderous rampage, saying he saw one of his victims – appearing to refer to freshman student Jaime Guttenberg – “crawling” on the third floor and so “I shot her in the back”.
When asked why he did that, 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 told the psychiatrist matter of factly.
Cruz then revealed what was the only reason he ended the massacre when he did.
“I couldn’t find anyone to kill,” came his harrowing response.
Cruz had 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.
Dr Scott has spent up to 500 hours on Cruz’s case, examining the likes of school and medical records, and interviewing the gunman over three full days in March 2022.
The forensic psychiatrist testified that Cruz’s ability to recall details of the massacre and his decision-making during the rampage shows he has adequate executive functioning – the mental processes that enable people to plan and control his behaviour when he wants.
He said that his examination of Cruz led him to diagnose him with antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, a history of conduct disorder and malingering.
Antisocial personality disorder is also known as sociopathy and is a mental disorder where an individual consistently shows no regard for right and wrong. Malingering is where an individual fakes or exaggerates symptoms or tries to mislead the experts evaluating them.
His testimony comes as the prosecution is seeking to show that Cruz is a sociopath who planned his attack and has no remorse for murdering 17 victims – an argument that undermines Cruz’s defence that fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) led him to carry out the Valentine’s Day massacre.
As part of his diagnosis, Dr Scott explained that Cruz showed both impulsive aggression and planned aggression – where an individual plans and researches the aggression they want to carry out.
Dr Scott said that planned aggression is not a characteristic of FASD – but it is a characteristic of antisocial personality disorder.
To support his diagnosis, jurors were shown other video clips from Dr Scott’s interviews with Cruz where the gunman extensively described the plans and preparations that went into him carrying out one of the worst mass shootings in US history.
In one clip, Cruz is seen telling Dr Scott about his preparations the night before the massacre which included him practicing the shooting in a backyard.
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” and what to carry his firearm in so as not to arouse suspicion on route to the school.
The 24-year-old also told Dr Scott 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.
In another clip, Cruz detailed his “research” into several other mass shootings including Columbine and Virgina Tech in preparation for his own.
“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.”
From his research, he said he learned what type of guns the killers used in those cases as well as other things to expect during the massacre.
“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”.
Jurors were also shown Cruz’s social media history in the months leading up to the attack, where he spoke of his plans.
On 24 September 2017 – five months before the massacre and before his adoptive mother’s death – he wrote on YouTube: “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.”
Dr Scott testified that Cruz’s YouTube comments are a “window into what he thinks and feels”, revealing that he was “thinking about killing people and school shooters for a long time”.
In the days before the mass shooting, Cruz also created videos where he told viewers his plans for the shooting.
“With the power of my AR you will know who I am,” he says in one video.
“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.
The social media posts, videos before the attack and Cruz’s own statements all show the level of planning that went into the mass murder, said the expert.
“This was not a spur of the moment decision. This had been planned out for months,” said Dr Scott.
The psychiatrist first began testimony last Tuesday as part of the prosecution’s rebuttal case, before the trial was put on hold due to Hurricane Ian.
Jurors will decide whether to sentence Cruz to life in prison or to death.
