FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A former neighbor of the Parkland school shooter shared bizarre anecdotes about his childhood for jurors Wednesday, describing a boy who always seemed like something was “not right.”
Steven Schusler, who lived across the street from Nikolas Cruz and his family for about six years, starting when the child was 10, said Cruz was always an odd child in the neighborhood, not quite fitting in with his peers.
He described one incident in which he saw Cruz running outside his home, holding an airsoft rifle that fired plastic pellets. Schusler compared Cruz’s running style to that of a toddler trying to keep his balance while discovering the ability to run. Cruz, seated at the defense table, chuckled during the demonstration.
“There was never any sense of normalcy,” Schusler said. “You could always see there was something just not right ... This boy did not go bad. He was never right.”
The testimony came on the third day of the defense case in the trial of Cruz, 23, who is facing the death penalty for each of the 17 murders he committed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018. Defense lawyers are hoping that jurors, after seeing how Cruz struggled with mental health issues throughout his life, will show mercy on him and sentence him to life rather than death.
Earlier Wednesday, jurors learned from a now-retired psychologist who said the woman who adopted Cruz and his brother, Zachary, was in over her head as she tried to raise them alone.
After her husband’s untimely death in 2004, Lynda Cruz was left alone to raise Nikolas and Zachary. Both had difficulties, said former therapist Frederick Kravitz. But young Nikolas had especially difficult problems. “When Nikolas got frustrated or angry, he’d lash out,” Kravitz said.
The child, who saw his father collapse of a fatal heart attack, was terrified of being left behind by his mother. “He was extremely fearful she would forget to pick him up at school, and he would be stranded there,” Kravitz said. “He had a pretty active, bad imagination.”
Kravitz portrayed Lynda Cruz, who was in her 50s as the boys went from infancy through elementary school, as a woman who simply could not keep up with the demands of being a single mom to these two challenging children.
But prosecutors are seizing on the same testimony to show not only that Cruz was receiving treatment, but that he was suffering from problems that are not uncommon.
“I’ve worked with some other very damaged kids and certainly, to the best of my knowledge, none of them have ever acted out like” Cruz did in Parkland, Kravitz said.
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