FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The killer gave one warning to one student — “Get out of here,” he said. “Things are going to get bad.”
Jurors in the penalty trial of Parkland school shooter Nicholas Cruz got another look Tuesday at how bad things got, sitting through 15 minutes of silent surveillance camera footage that showed his deadly rampage through the hallways and stairwells of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day 2018.
And they heard from some of the survivors of the mass shooting, teenagers and teachers who saw a pleasant afternoon turn into a nightmarish fight for survival.
“It was starting to get real,” said former Stoneman Douglas student Alex Dworet, who felt the searing sensation of a bullet grazing the back of his head, felt the blood trickling down his neck and chest, saw it on his hands — and still tried to convince himself it wasn’t really happening, until he saw his friend slumped over a desk, twitching, spasming, dying, dead.
The friend was Alex Schachter, 14, who was making a name for himself playing two instruments in the high school band.
Dworet couldn’t have known it at the time, but his own brother, Nicholas, was another student who would not make it out alive. Nicholas Dworet was a senior, a talented swimmer with his eye on competing in the 2020 Olympics. He would have been starting college at the University of Indianapolis had his life not been cut short by Cruz.
Alex Dworet was lucky to survive. So were his classmates and teacher, who testified about their efforts to survive and their shock at seeing that Schachter did not.
Their teacher, Dara Hass, sobbed as she recalled trying to stay behind to help those who could not make it out of the classroom when police arrived. “It was hard for me to leave,” she said. “I wanted to stay with the students ... with the students who had been injured.”
Three students died in that classroom, 1216. Alyssa Alhadeff, a soccer player with a soft spot for the Deerfield Beach pier; Alaina Petty, a volunteer for the “Helping Hands” program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and Schachter.
Their parents were not in court Tuesday.
Mitch and Annika Dworet were watching one son testify one minute and listening to accounts of their other son’s death the next. Family members of the other victims circled the Dworets Tuesday afternoon in a spontaneous outpouring of sympathy and concern. The families of Jaime Guttenberg, Luke Hoyer, Scott Biegel and others are keenly aware they will hear similar details about the final moments of their loved ones.
Jurors heard from student Samantha Grady about the compassion of victim Helena Ramsay, who approached Grady, whose initial response to the gunshots was to freeze in a part of the room that left her vulnerable to the killer’s weapon. “Sam,” Ramsay said, urging her friend to get out of the line of fire.
It was Ramsay who ended up dead that day. Family members afterward called her a reserved teenager with a “relentless motivation towards her academic studies.”
Her classmate, shooting survivor Samantha Fuentes, offered steely testimony about her own injuries, glaring in the direction of the defense table toward Cruz, who steadfastly declined to meet her gaze.
Jurors also heard from survivor Christopher McKenna, who was not shot but was the first to see Cruz setting up for his shooting spree. It was McKenna who received Cruz’s warning. And it was McKenna who was asked by prosecutor Mike Satz to identify the gunman, for the record.
McKenna stood up and pointed. For him, Cruz looked up.
Their first meeting, captured on surveillance video, lasted only a few seconds. McKenna raced out of the building for help. By the time it arrived, Cruz had already opened fire.
On the video shown to jurors, Cruz is seen stalking the hallways, pointing his gun into classrooms, looking down stairwells for unsuspecting victims. On the third floor of the 1200 building, he’s seen opening fire toward a group of more than a dozen students, some of whom cowered in an alcove, waited for a few moments, then fled, leaving one still student behind. Cruz is seen approaching that student and shooting her almost casually.
In another clip, Cruz is seen wounding athletic director Christopher Hixon, who crawls to safety only to have Cruz catch up to him, raise his weapon and open fire.
Earlier on Tuesday, defense lawyer David Wheeler asked Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer not to show the video. It was repetitive, he said, and the emotional impact outweighed its value as evidence of what happened.
Prosecutor Jeff Marcus disagreed, telling the judge it was the state’s obligation to prove that what Cruz did at Stoneman Douglas was cold, calculated, premeditated and especially heinous, atrocious and cruel.
The judge sided with prosecutors.
Testimony continues Wednesday.
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