FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Peter Wang’s mother has four tattoos in memory of her 15-year-old son, one on Feb. 14 each year since he was killed. Carmen Schentrup’s parents believe that sleep is elusive. Nicholas Durrett’s mother hesitates every time someone asks her, “How many kids do you have?”
Joaquin Oliver’s mother cannot join relatives for family celebrations because her son is gone. Jaime Gutenberg’s mother finds it impossible to watch her beloved Florida Gators play football because they are also her daughter’s favorite team. Gina Montalto’s father struggles with his marriage strained by grief over the loss of his daughter.
One by one, relatives and friends of the 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., took the stand in court this week and revealed to jurors the depth of their despair since losing loved ones in a shooting four years before Valentine’s Day. . Over four days of deeply emotional testimony, they shared painful and intimate details that revealed how their inner lives remain shattered and how massacres like Parkland leave families with years of unresolved grief.
“I have a box over my heart with the lid so tight, trying to keep all my emotions under control,” said Linda Bagel Shulman, who lost her son, Scott J. Bagel, geography teacher. “But today I’m taking the lid off that box.”
Heartbreaking testimony ended Thursday after jurors deciding the fate of gunman Nikolas Cruz toured the school building where the mass shooting took place. Prosecutors left the crime scene examination, an extremely rare and intuitive occurrence in a criminal trial, to the final day of their nearly three-week presentation and rested their case.
What the 12 jurors and 10 deputies saw inside Stoneman Douglas High’s Building 12, which had been boarded up and unused since the day of the shooting, was a moment frozen in time, a joyous celebration interrupted by a deadly riot. Bullet holes pierced the doors and walls. Shards of broken glass crunched under their feet. Laptops remained open, class work unfinished. Dried rose petals were strewn across the blood-soaked floors.
In an unfinished English assignment, a student had written: “We go to school every day of the week and take everything for granted. We cry and complain, not knowing how lucky we are to be able to learn.” In the second floor hallway was a quote from James Dean: “Dream as if you will live forever, live as if you will die today.”
The visit to the crime scene capped 12 days of often gruesome video footage and autopsy evidence in a harrowing trial in which a jury will decide whether Mr. Cruz, 23, who pleaded guilty, should be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole. for replacement. The defense is due to begin its case on August 22. The judge will first hold a hearing without a jury to decide whether defense lawyers can use a map of Mr. Cruz’s brain as evidence of the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome.
Before hearing from the families and relatives of the victims, jurors heard from 17 survivors who were injured in the shooting, who described how they suffered their injuries and the lasting effects of being hit by high-velocity gunfire. Several still have pieces of shrapnel in their bodies.
Benjamin Vikander’s radial nerve was so badly damaged that he still has to wear an arm brace. Maddie Wilford has trouble breathing with her right lung. Sam Fuentes suffers from chronic pain and spasms in his legs and no longer has the same range of motion as before.
But the courtroom looked perhaps the most somber, as parents, siblings, grandparents and friends found it hard to stay calm as they remembered their loved ones and described life without them. They often reached for tissues. A bailiff offered them water.
“I can do this,” said Tori Gonzalez, Joaquin Oliver’s girlfriend, as she took a deep breath on the witness stand. One of the judges broke down in tears when she called Joaquin her soul mate.
“I lost my innocence,” she said of the shooting. “I lost my purity. I lost the love letters he wrote me in that fourth creative writing class.”
Many relatives said they were unable to celebrate birthdays and holidays after the shooting. Peter Wang’s family no longer gathers for Chinese New Year. Luke Hoyer’s mother called Christmas almost unbearable. Helena Ramsay was killed on her father’s birthday.
Families lamented that they would never see their children graduate from high school or college. Never walk them on the trail. Never be glad they have children of their own.
“She never took her braces off,” said Megan Petty, Alaina Petty’s sister. “She never got her first kiss.”
Parents and spouses describe their homes as unbearably quiet. “The night no longer brings intimacy and comfort,” said Debra Hickson, the wife of Chris Hickson, the school’s athletic director, “only the power of silence.”
Her son Corey Hickson, who has Kabuki syndrome, a rare genetic disorder, said simply of his father: “I miss him!”
Some people were angry. Alyssa Alhadeff’s father, Dr. Ilan Alhadeff, repeatedly cried out through tears, “This is not normal!” He said his wife “sprays Alyssa’s perfume every now and then just to try to smell her.”
“She even slept with Alice’s blanket four years later,” he added.
Some parents struggle to work. Fred Gutenberg, the father of Jaime Gutenberg, who became a gun control activist, said he had been unable to hold down a normal job and that his public crusade “made life harder for my wife and harder for my son and for that I am sorry.”
“It broke me,” he said.
The shooting changed his relationship with his son, who had to wait for Jaime and drive her home after school that day. Instead, after Mr. Gutenberg learned of the shooting, he told his son to run.
“He’s struggling with the reality that he can’t save his sister, and he wishes it was him,” he said. “He’s mad that I’m talking him into running.”
As victim after victim spoke, many in the courtroom wept. So did several lawyers.
Nicholas Bogle-Burroughs contributed reporting.
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