Crime

Courtroom scenes from Parkland school shooting trial: Anger and tears

By David Ovalle

Updated August 3, 2022 4:49 PM

Broward Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene Detective Dan Krystyn identifies high capacity magazines recovered at the crime scene. His testimony came during the first week of the sentencing hearing for Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz. Mike Stocker South Florida Sun Sentinel

They lived the horror more than four years ago when Nikolas Cruz massacred 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland.

Now, in Broward County circuit courtroom 17150, the survivors and witnesses have begun reliving it again in the sentencing trail for Cruz, a case that will ask jurors to decide whether he should spend the rest of his life in prison or be executed for the worst school shooting in Florida history.

There is no whodunit mystery in this trial. Cruz, 23, has already confessed to the murders of 17 people and the attempted murders of 17 others. The drama each day has come in the form of grief, the hearings another ordeal to be endured for a slow-moving justice system.

Students who survived recount their own terror, some breaking down, the screams of the injured still echoing. Others describe the scars and physical pain they still endure from their bullet wounds. Families who lost children, husbands, loved ones wince and weep at the details of Cruz’s methodical assault and the unspeakable damage caused by the high-velocity bullets from his AR-15 rifle.

Prosecutors, police and medical examiners explain it all in wrenching detail.

Below are some scenes from the first week and a half of hearings that are expected to last months.