Florida Man Pleads Guilty to Murdering 17 People in 2018 Parkland Shooting

• Nikolas Cruz pleads guilty to 17 counts of murder in 2018 Parkland school shooting
• Cruz, 23, and his attorneys shocked Scherer and prosecutors last week when they revealed his intention to plead guilty

Ekohotblog reports that Nikolas Cruz, a Florida man, pleaded guilty Wednesday to 17 charges of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder, more than three years after killing 14 students and three faculty members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer pointed out that the murder offenses to which he pled guilty carry a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release.

 

Cruz, 23, and his attorneys shocked Scherer and prosecutors last week when they revealed his intention to plead guilty to all 34 counts.

Also during last week’s hearing, the gunman pleaded guilty to four charges that he faced after he attacked a Broward County Jail guard nine months after the shooting.

In a rushed statement to the court Wednesday, a trembling Cruz apologized for his crimes.

“I am very sorry for what I did and I have to live with it every day,” he said. “I have to live with this every day, and it brings me nightmares that I can’t live with myself sometimes but I try to push through.”

The case will now go straight to a penalty phase, to determine if he should face the death penalty. Jury selection is set to begin on Jan. 4.

In a statement, March for Our Lives, a group formed by Parkland student activists to advocate for tighter gun laws, said it had no comment on the gunman and that they would “never dignify him by referring to his name.”

But the group said: “A single guilty plea does not bring closure as long as it is still possible for another person anywhere in this country to be murdered by a gun at school, in a place of worship, or in their very own home.”

David Hogg, a former Stoneman Douglas high school student and March for Our Lives co-founder, said he drew little satisfaction from the convictions against the gunman.

“Ultimately there is no closure, in that our classmates are never coming back, our teachers are never coming back,” Hogg told MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on Wednesday afternoon.

“The closest thing to closure that I know many of my classmates and I can even think of is creating a world, a country, in which our children don’t have to be born into a situation where they live in danger of gun violence.”

In court Wednesday, the gunman answered a series of questions from Scherer, showing that he understood the court proceedings.

Scherer reminded him that in pleading guilty to all charges, his best-case scenario would be to die in prison.

“Life in prison means the term of your life,” she said. “It means you will not come out until you are no longer alive.”

The gunman said he understood.

The convicted killer stood silently, looking down with slumped shoulders, as the details of the shooting were read in court by Broward County State Attorney Michael Satz.