Parkland Shooter Formally Sentenced to Life in Prison Without Parole for 2018 Valentine’s Day School Massacre

Simone November 2, 2022 News Leave a comment

Nikolas Cruz, the gunman responsible for murdering 17 people in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was formally sentenced to life in prison without parole Wednesday. Just last month, a jury recommended that life sentence instead of the death penalty, a decision that shook family members of the victims.

Cruz, now 24, pleaded guilty in October 2021 to 17 counts of murder. He was sentenced on 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder, with 34 counts of the indictment to be served consecutively.

Prior to the formal sentencing, survivors and family members of the students and staff killed in the Valentine’s Day massacre addressed the gunman.

Lori Alhadeff, the mother of Alyssa Alhadeff, 14, said in her statement in court, “All I wanted to do was to bring Alyssa back to life. But I couldn’t protect her, and I couldn’t save her.”

“My hope for you is that you are miserable for the rest of your pathetic life,” she said. “My hope for you is that the pain of what you did to my family burns and traumatizes you every day.

Alyssa’s father, Ilan Alhadeff, said, “Let me show how angry and frustrated I am with the judicial system. After 4 ½ grueling years, a failed judicial system did not hand down a death sentence to the murderer of my daughter and 16 others,” he said. “Do I see this as accountability? Absolutely not. Do we now have closure? Let me be clear, absolutely not. What I see is that the system values this animal’s life over the 17 now dead. Worse, we sent a message to the next killer out there that the death penalty would not be applied to mass killing. This is wrong and needs to be fixed immediately.”

Samantha Fuentes, a former classmate of Cruz, also spoke, saying, “You shot me in the leg. If you looked me in the face, like I’m looking at you right now, you would see the scars on it from the hot shrapnel that was lodged into it. Do you remember after you sprayed my classroom with bullets, standing in the door, peering in to see the work you’ve done? Do you remember my little battered, bloody face looking back at you? I could have sworn we locked eyes,” she said.

She continued, “I’ll have to live with the aftermath of this for the rest of my life. I’ll always have PTSD, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideations.”

April Schentrup, the mother of 16-year-old Carmen Schentrup, also wrote a statement that was read in court. “Although one death sentence does not even come close to the 17 homicides and 17 attempted homicides he committed, I am still shocked at how members of this jury could decide a life sentence for someone whose life goal was to harm and kill others,” she wrote.