[ad_1]
Lecturers gave heart-wrenching testimony Wednesday within the penalty trial of Nikolas Cruz, with one recalling how a boy in her Holocaust research class accurately answered a query seconds earlier than he grew to become considered one of 17 individuals murdered throughout the college shooter’s rampage 4 years in the past.
Ivy Schamis, then a trainer at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College, was main college students by a dialogue concerning the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany when star swimmer Nick Dworet accurately responded that Adolf Dassler based the Adidas shoe firm. He then added that Dassler’s brother based the rival Puma model.
It was then that they heard the primary gunshots within the hallway, and the defendant started firing his semi-automatic rifle by the glass on her classroom door.
“It was actually seconds later that the barrel of that AR—15 simply ambushed our classroom,” Schamis testified, wiping her eyes with a tissue. “It got here proper by that tumbler panel and was simply capturing in every single place. It was very loud. Very scary. I stored interested by these youngsters who shouldn’t be experiencing this in any respect.”
She mentioned the scholars scrambled to search out security behind furnishings, however did not panic and acted with bravery and maturity as they waited to be rescued. Three college students have been wounded in her class and two have been killed: Dworet and Helena Ramsay, each 17.
When proven their portraits, she started to weep.
“That is my woman, Helena Ramsay,” she mentioned. “Nicholas Dworet, good-looking boy.”
Dworet’s brother Alexander was grazed by a bullet in a classroom throughout the corridor, the place three college students have been killed and several other extra wounded.
The 23-year-old defendant pleaded responsible in October to 17 counts of first-degree homicide for the Feb. 14, 2018, bloodbath. The jury should resolve if the previous Stoneman Douglas scholar needs to be sentenced to dying or life with out parole for the nation’s deadliest mass capturing to go earlier than a jury. The trial is anticipated to final by no less than October.
9 different gunmen who killed no less than 17 individuals died throughout or instantly after their shootings, both by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect within the 2019 slaying of 23 individuals at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, is awaiting trial.
Schamis’ testimony was adopted by that of Ronit Reoven, who was lecturing her superior psychology class about Sigmund Freud when the shooter began firing into her neighboring classroom, additionally by the door’s window.
“There have been a number of gunshots,” she mentioned. “They have been extremely loud. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM! I froze for a second and the scholars jumped out of their seats. After all, they have been startled and scared.”
Reoven mentioned she and the scholars crouched on the ground round her desk and wounded college students have been moaning and crying. She used a blanket that usually lined her espresso machine as a tourniquet to cease the bleeding from a boy’s arm. One other boy used a jacket to stanch the bleeding from a woman’s chest. A woman shot within the knee gave the impression to be secure. However 16-year-old Carmen Schentrup was mendacity facedown in a pool of blood.
“I knew that she was most likely gone,” Reoven mentioned.
The academics’ testimony got here a day after jurors noticed surveillance video exhibiting victims being gunned down at point-blank vary. The gunman additionally killed a few of the wounded by firing on them a second time as they lay on the ground.
When jurors finally get the case, they’ll vote 17 instances, as soon as for every of the victims, on whether or not to advocate capital punishment.
For every dying sentence, the jury should be unanimous or the sentence for that sufferer is life. The jurors are informed that to vote for dying, the prosecution’s aggravating circumstances for that sufferer should, of their judgment, “outweigh” the protection’s mitigators. A juror can even vote for all times out of mercy. Throughout jury choice, the panelists mentioned beneath oath that they’re able to voting for both sentence.
[ad_2]
Source link