Parkland High School killer Nikolas Cruz confident he will be released from prison


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Nikolas Cruz, currently on trial for the Parkland High School shooting, remains confident he will be released after his trial.

To avoid the death penalty, his lawyers highlight his mental state. Nikolas Cruz is currently on trial in the United States for the 2018 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people lost their lives. In order to prove that he was not in full capacity of his psychological faculties at the time of the tragedy, his defenders called in an expert. The latter concluded that their client was “delusional”, in particular because he is convinced that he will one day be released from prison, which is in reality impossible. If he is not sentenced to capital punishment, he will be sentenced to life imprisonment anyway. According to his lawyers, who are fighting for this second option, Nikolas Cruz’s traumatic upbringing and his seriously compromised mental health are mitigating factors in the massacre. The defense also intends to highlight the fact that the young man saw his father die of a heart attack when he was still a child.

To read : In the Footsteps of the Florida Killer

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“I’m going to be the next high school killer of the year 2018”

So many elements that do not, however, make us forget the violence of the attack against the high school students of Parkland. At the start of the trial, prosecutor Mike Satz said the tragedy had been “planned” and that it was a “mass crime”. A total of 139 bullets were fired into Building 12 where the shooting took place. “My first name is Nik. I will be the next high school killer of the year 2018. My goal is to kill at least 20 people with an AR-15. It’s going to be a big event and when you see me on the news, you’ll know who I am. You are all going to die… I can’t wait, ”he said in particular three days before taking action. In October 2021, the accused pleaded guilty to all 17 murder charges against him. “I’m really sorry for what I did and I have to live with it every day,” he told the court.

The shooting was the worst school massacre in the United States since the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 26 people were killed. The drama of Parkland had aroused immense emotion, and a historic mobilization had been led by several young survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and by the parents of victims. It culminated on March 24, 2018 when the “March for Our Lives” brought together 1.5 million people across the country, the largest national demonstration for better firearms control in the entire history of the United States. , suggesting to some the possibility of legislative change. This has not happened, and the sales of firearms have on the contrary increased in recent years in the United States, in particular during the Covid-19 pandemic. Last May, a new attack took place in Texas, in an elementary school in Uvalde, where 21 people, mostly children, were killed.





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