The then 19-year-old shooter killed 17 people. Parkland’s killer now faces life imprisonment. Relatives had asked for the death penalty.
Fort Lauderdale / Washington – Four and a half years after a school massacre in the American city of Parkland, Florida, the perpetrator was sentenced to life in prison. Judge Elizabeth Scherer read out the verdict on Wednesday (local time) for 17 murders. An early release is therefore not possible. Already in mid-October, a Jury against the death penalty and confirmed a life sentence for 24-year-old Nikolas Cruz.
Parkland killer sentenced to life in prison
Cruz was also sentenced to life in prison for each of the 17 wounded in the massacre he instigated. The renunciation of the death penalty against Cruz had already aroused outrage among the families of the victims last October.
During the hearing two days before the sentencing, the parents and other relatives of many of the victims expressed their pain and anger directly to Cruz. “I hope the pain for what you did to my family burns you and traumatizes you every day,” said Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter died in the massacre, according to National Public Radio (NPR).
That of then Cruz, 19, had it on Valentine’s Day 2018 opened fire on students and teachers from his former school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, with a semi-automatic rifle. He killed 14 students and three school staff and injured 17 other people. The Parkland attack was one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.
Arrested shortly after the crime, Cruz pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder.
After the Parkland school shooting: US citizens protest tougher gun laws
The Parkland School Massacre had caused horror outside the United States. Shortly after the bloodbath, survivors of the attack launched a nationwide student movement calling for stricter gun ownership regulations. A month after the massacre, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in the US capital Washington at the “March for Our Lives”. However, the tightening of the gun law remained largely absent.(app)
