The shooter who massacred 17 people in the deadliest high school shooting in US history should be sentenced to life in prison and be spared the death penalty, a jury has ruled.
During the 2018 shooting, which lasted around six minutes, Nikolas Cruz, now 24, gunned down 13 students and three members of staff at the Stoneman Douglas High School in the Miami suburb of Parkland.
The youngest victim was just 14.
Cruz was sentenced almost a year after he pled guilty to all charges against him - 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.
The family of victims packed into the public gallery, with their anger and upset growing as repeated life sentence verdicts were read out. Many hoped for Cruz to face the death penalty.
Cruz had been a previous student at the school and had a history of extremist views.
Swastikas had been carved in the empty ammunition clips left at the scene of the shooting.
Armed with a legally bought AR-15 semi automatic rifle he went from classroom to classroom firing indiscriminately.
Following the massacre, Cruz dropped the weapon and fled, blending in with the terrified crowds of students.
He was arrested just over an hour later.
His fate was decided by a 12-person jury. In Florida a unanimous decision is needed for the death penalty to be issued. If a single juror disagrees, the defendant will be sentenced to life in prison instead.
Cruz' defence have argued that he suffers from severe mental health issues brought about by fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, caused my his mother's drinking when she was pregnant.
Melisa McNeill, the lead public defender, said: “In a civilized, humane society, do we kill brain-damaged, mentally ill, broken people?”
The jury decided there was no charge in which the aggravating factors have outweighed these mitigating factors.
The victims on that grim day were:
- Alyssa Alhadeff, 14
- Scott Beigel, 35
- Martin Duque, 14
- Nicholas Dworet, 17
- Aaron Feis, 37
- Jaime Guttenberg, 14
- Chris Hixon, 49
- Luke Hoyer, 15
- Cara Loughran, 14
- Gina Montalto, 14
- Joaquin Oliver, 17
- Alaina Petty, 14
- Meadow Pollack, 18
- Helena Ramsay, 17
- Alex Schachter, 14
- Carmen Schentrup, 16
- Peter Wang, 15
After pleading guilty in October 2021, Cruz removed his face mask and apologised to the victims of the shooting saying he is "sorry" and that he has to live with "nightmares" every day.
"I am very sorry for what I did and I have to live with it every day," he said.
The sentencing proceedings included testimony from survivors of the shooting as well as cellphone videos in which terrified students cried for help or spoke in hushed whispers as they hid.
Some of the teenagers who survived the deadly rampage formed "March for Our Lives", an organisation that called for gun control legislation such as a ban on assault-style rifles.
In March 2018, the group held a nationally televised march in Washington that sparked hundreds of similar rallies worldwide.
The Parkland shooting had led to renewed calls for tighter gun control in the United States.
U.S. gun violence gained renewed attention following mass shootings this year at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead, and another at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that killed 10 people.
President Joe Biden in June signed into law the first major federal gun reform legislation in three decades, which he called a rare bipartisan achievement.
