FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Empty bedrooms. Empty dining room chairs. The scent of a book. Each seemingly mundane item holds trauma for the family members of a Parkland victim, the fathers, mothers and friends told jurors who will decide the sentence for the confessed school shooter.
The jury is considering evidence and testimony in the sentencing trial of Nikolas Cruz, who confessed to murdering 17 students and staff on Valentine’s Day 2018, and shot and injured another 17. Prosecutors are seeking the death sentence.
The last of the victim impact statements delivered on Wednesday in the Broward County Courthouse cannot be considered a mitigating factor, Judge Elizabeth Scherer warned the jury for the third day. Still, raw emotions were on display.
Jennifer Montalto, the mother of Gina Montalto, 14, described her daughter as a kind spirit, a cook, and a Girl Scout who became “instant friends with everyone she met.” She loved books so much, the touch, the smell, she once told her mother she wanted to live in a library.
“Gina didn’t come home from school that day,” she cried. “I told my daughter I could not imagine my life without her.”
Her father, Tony, was wearing the same suit that he once took her to a father-daughter dance. The yearning to hug his daughter never goes away, he said.
“Life without Gina is nearly unbearable,” he said as his wife sat in the courtroom wiping her eyes. “She knew right from wrong. And she valued life.”
When she was 10, she saved a 2-year-boy from drowning. And when a friend tried to coax the secret ingredient to her family’s barbecued ribs, her response was “the special ingredient was love.”
Max Schachter remembered his son, the trombone player who loved chocolate chip cookies, beef pot roast and video games. He remembered 14-year-old Alex Schachter, but “part of me will always be sad and miserable.”
“It’s an ache that is just constant,” he said. “I wish every single day this is a nightmare I can wake up from.”
Sifting through Alex’s things to find strength to write his eulogy, they found a poem he had written for his fourth-period English class: “Life is like a roller coaster.”
“It might be hard to breathe at times,” the poem urged, “but hold on tight and don’t let go. It might be too much at times, the twists at times, but get back up and eventually it all comes to a stop and you won’t know when or how.”
A family friend for the parents of Cara Loughran, 14, told the jury that the teenager was a straight-A student who loved to surf and perform Irish dance. She was planning an Ireland summer vacation.
The jury was present on Wednesday only to hear the impact statements. In other court business, the defense team and prosecutors discussed details for allowing the jurors to walk through the 1200 building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where the mass shooting occurred.
The visit to the school is scheduled for Thursday.
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