FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Peter Wang’s mother has four tattoos in memory of her 15-year-old son, one on February 14 every year since the boy was killed. Carmen Schentrup’s parents found it difficult to sleep. Nicholas Dworet’s mother hesitates every time someone asks her, “How many children do you have?”
Joaquin Oliver’s mother couldn’t bear to have a family celebration with relatives because her son had died. Jaime Guttenberg’s mother feels unable to watch her beloved Florida Gators play soccer, as they are also her daughter’s favorite soccer team. Gina Montalto’s father struggles with his marriage, strained by grief over the loss of his daughter.
One by one, the relatives and friends of the 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., stood trial this week and revealed to the jury their desperation since. when losing loved ones to a four-year shooting spree. Previously on Valentine’s Day. In four days of poignantly emotional testimony, they shared painful and intimate details that revealed how their internal lives remained shattered and how massacres like Parkland left bereaved families. family for many years of unresolved grief.
Linda Beigel Schulman, who lost her son, Scott J. Beigel, a geography teacher, said: “I have a box of my heart with a very tight lid, trying to keep all of my emotions within me. control. “But today, I’m opening that box.”
Heartbreaking testimony concluded on Thursday after grand jury decide the gunman’s fateNikolas Cruz, tour the school building where the mass shooting took place. Prosecutors walked away from viewing the crime scene, which is extremely rare and happens in a criminal trial, on the final day of their nearly three-week presentation and halted their case. surname.
What 12 jurors and 10 surrogates saw inside Stoneman Douglas High’s Building 12, which has been fenced off and unused since the day of the shooting, was a moment frozen in time. time, a happy holiday is interrupted by a deadly rampage. Bullet holes punctured doors and walls. Shards of glass crumbled under their feet. The laptop is still open, the class work is not done yet. Dried rose petals were scattered on the blood-stained floor.
In an unfinished English assignment in class, one student wrote: “We go to school every day of the week and we take it for granted. We cry and complain without knowing how lucky we are to be able to learn.” A second-floor hallway has a quote by James Dean: “Dream as if you’re going to live forever, live as if you’re going to die today.”
Field visit is limited to 12 days from date usually gruesome video and autopsy evidence in a harsh trial in which a jury will decide whether Mr. Cruz, 23, who confessed?, should be sentenced to death or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The defense is scheduled to begin the case on August 22. The judge will first hold a hearing without a jury to decide if defense attorneys can use the map. Cruz’s brain as evidence of the effects of alcoholism on the fetus.
Before hearing the victim’s family and loved ones recount, the jury heard 17 victims who were injured in the shooting recount how they were injured and the residual effects of being hit by high-speed bullets. high. Some still had shrapnel in their bodies.
Benjamin Wikander’s afferent nerve was so damaged that he still had to wear a brace. Maddy Wilford difficulty breathing with her right lung. Sam Fuentes has chronic pain and spasms in his legs and is no longer able to move.
But the courtroom is perhaps the saddest because parents, siblings, grandparents and friends find it difficult to stay calm as they think about their loved ones and describe life without them. They frequently reach the tissues. A bailiff offered them water.
“I can do this,” Tori Gonzalez, Joaquin Oliver’s girlfriend, said while taking a deep breath in the witness stand. One juror cried when she called Joaquin her soulmate.
“I lost my innocence,” she said of the shooting. “I have lost my purity. I lost the love letters he was writing to me in that fourth period creative writing class.”
Many relatives have spoken out about not being able to celebrate birthdays and holidays since the shooting happened. Peter Wang’s family no longer gathers to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Luke Hoyer’s mother called Christmas is almost unbearable. Helena Ramsay was killed on her father’s birthday.
Families lament that they will never see their child graduate from high school or college. Never lead them down the aisle. Never rejoice when they have children of their own.
Meghan Petty, Alaina Petty’s older sister, said: ‘She’s never had braces off. “She never had her first kiss.”
Parents and spouses describe their home as unbelievably quiet. Debra Hixon, wife of Chris Hixon, the school’s athletic director, said: “Evenings no longer offer intimacy and comfort, ‘just the humming of silence’.
Her son, Corey Hixon, who has Kabuki syndrome, a rare genetic disorder, said of his father simply: “I miss him!”
Some people were angry. Alyssa Alhadeff’s father, Dr Ilan Alhadeff, repeatedly shouted in tears: “This is not normal!” He said his wife “dosn’t sometimes spray Alyssa’s perfume just to try and smell her.”
“She even slept with Alyssa’s blanket, four years later,” he added.
Some parents have struggled to work. Fred Guttenberg, the father of Jaime Guttenberg, who became a gun control activist, said he has been unable to keep a regular job and his crusade “has made life difficult for my wife. harder and my son harder, and for that, I’m sorry.”
“This frustrates me,” he said.
The shooting changed his relationship with his son, who allegedly waited for Jaime and drove her home after school that day. Instead, when Mr. Guttenberg heard gunfire, he told his son to run away.
“He struggles with the fact that he can’t save his sister, and he wishes it were him,” he said. “He was angry I persuaded him to run.”
After the victim spoke, many in the courtroom cried. So do some defense attorneys.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed reporting.
