FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Jurors in the penalty trial of the confessed Parkland gunman listened to law enforcement officers describe carnage during the fifth day of testimony: injured students pleading for help, and body after body of people who were either defenseless or spent their final breaths providing cover for students to escape.
The images of violence depicted in Friday’s testimony were not unlike the emotional firsthand accounts of students and teachers earlier in the week. But, for the first time, jurors examined crime scene and autopsy photos of deceased students. It took more than an hour.
Iouri Boiko, a Broward County medical examiner, performed autopsies for Martin Duque, Alaina Petty, Carmen Schentrup and Meadow Pollack the day after the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting. He described his findings in clinical, precise detail while jurors viewed photos of their wounds.
Family members of students who died in the shooting winced, shook their heads and held back tears as Boiko testified. When each of the entry and exit points for Duque’s eight bullet wounds was described, Max Schachter put his hands over his face in the courtroom gallery.
Duque was 14 years old when he died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. So was Max Schachter’s son, Alex.
The public could not see the autopsy images, but their descriptions alone were enough. Several family members left the courtroom. All the while, confessed gunman Nikolas Cruz scribbled on a notepad.
The testimony of detectives and law enforcement officers was just as difficult. Parents teared up and struggled to listen as officers recounted the moment they stumbled across bullet-riddled survivors pleading for medical assistance, or they discovered bodies.
Capt. Nicholas Mazzei of the Coral Springs Police Department was the first witness on the stand Friday.
“I observed officers on scene,” Mazzei said. “As I moved closer to the building I observed a body lying on the ground.”
It was Aaron Feis, a football coach for the team at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who died shielding students from gunfire.
“I checked him for vitals,” Mazzei testified, “realized he was deceased.”
Richard Van Der Eems, a sergeant with the Broward Sheriff’s Office, testified next. Van Der Eems described approaching the east side of the building before entering through double doors. He witnessed other officers attempting to help the children caught in the midst of chaos.
“They were clearing kids out of the room,” Van Der Eems said. He and other officers went to the third floor of the building to find a student raising his hand for help.
“He was trying to say something,” Van Der Eems testified. “We grabbed him, drug him back to west side stairwell.”
The student was Anthony Borges, a freshman at Stoneman Douglas who had been shot five times. Earlier in the week, Borges had shown his scars to the jury.
Detective David Alfin of the Coral Springs Police Department also testified he heard someone calling for help from a hallway on the third floor. He followed the voice and found a wounded Borges.
”I was still looking down the hallway, covering, in case we encountered the subject,” Alfin said. “The officers dragged him (Borges) back to get him into the hallway to provide medical care.”
Before Alfin heard the cries for help from a surviving student, he saw death — students who had been killed before help arrived.
Alfin said he cleared several rooms in the hallway and found a body propped up against a bathroom door. In the courtroom, he identified the student as Joaquin Oliver.
”I had to remove him from the door so that it could be checked to ensure nobody was inside of it,” Alfin said.
Fred Guttenberg wiped tears from his eyes as Alfin described finding his daughter Jaime, a 15-year-old Stoneman Douglas student who died in the shooting.
”I checked her vital signs for breath and for pulse, I found none,” Alfin testified on Friday. “And I checked several times.”
Her father dropped his head in the courtroom as he listened on Friday, the first day this week he appeared in court without his wife Jennifer. Later, when the courtroom broke for recess, Mitch Dworet, father of 17-year-old Nicholas Dworet who also died, walked out of the chambers with his arm across Guttenberg’s shoulders.
Crime scene photos showed several victims with multiple wounds and blood-stained clothes huddled on top of each other, with blood splattered on the floor and walls. Bullet holes were on doors and walls, while glass had shattered windows of the maroon-colored classroom doors.
Friday ended with the introduction of the confessed gunman’s and his victims’ personal belongings.
Broward Sheriff’s Office crime scene detective Danny Krystyan identified Cruz’s black backpack, a knife he kept inside, a black ski mask and three magazines of ammunition for his AR-15.
Krystyan then identified items belonging to Luke Hoyer, a 15-year-old who died in the shooting. Hoyer’s laptop and phone were brought into the courtroom, each pierced with a bullet hole straight down the middle.
Hoyer’s father, Tom, was in court on Friday. He watched as his son’s school supplies — items he hadn’t seen since his son was alive and had never seen with bullet holes — were shown to the judge as state exhibits.
The penalty trial for shooter Cruz started with jury selection in April and is expected to continue until October in the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale. Testimony will resume on Monday.
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