On Monday, Nikolas Cruz’s sentencing hearing continued, and jurors watched cell phone videos of Cruz talking about his plans for the attack. In 2018, the 23-year-old was found guilty of killing 17 people in Parkland, Florida.
Cruz, who was 19 at the time, is said to have gone to Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018, with an AR-15. He started shooting at students and staff and attacking them. Cruz was caught by police after he tried to hide by looking like one of the other students.
In October 2021, he admitted that he had killed 17 people and tried to kill 17 more.
When the police looked into what happened after the shooting, they said they found evidence that Cruz had carefully planned the whole thing. His search history showed that before the massacre, he had looked up information about weapons and how long it takes for police to arrive.
In videos found on Cruz’s phone, he can be heard talking about how he plans to use the AR-15 he bought legally to attack people at the school. Also, at least one of the videos on his phone were said to have been made on the day of the shooting.
How Nikolas Cruz planned and got ready
In the video shown to the jury, Nikolas Cruz can be seen making a step-by-step plan for what he was going to do before the shooting.
“Okay, here is the plan. Before 2:40 in the afternoon, I’m going to take an Uber. From there, I’ll walk onto the school campus, walk up the stairs, go into my bags to get my AR, shoot people in the main courtyard, and wait. People will die.”
Nikolas Cruz says in a different video that he thinks the shooting will make him famous. He even said that he planned to kill as many people at Stoneman Douglas High as he could. He wanted to kill at least 20 people.
In another video, the shooter said his name and said that he was going to be “the next school shooter of 2018.” After telling where the shooting would happen, Cruz said it would “be a big event.”
In another of Cruz’s videos, which was also shown, he talked about how happy he was to be on the news after the attack. He is heard saying that everyone will know who he is when they see him on the news.
Along with the videos, Cruz’s digital history and texts seem to show that he had been thinking about the attack for a long time. He had looked for “AR-15,” “school shooters,” and “how to fight.” The shooter had also read about other shootings, like the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.