The perpetrator of the Parkland school shooting in Florida was physically and intellectually retarded compared to other children his age, causing him to isolate himself, bite and hit to get what he wanted, a daycare administrator and a former neighbor said Tuesday in the sentencing phase of the trial.
The gunman, Nikolas Cruz, was stunted as a child because his mother abused cocaine and alcohol during pregnancy, the lawyers argued on the second day of hearings in which they asked that he be sentenced to life in prison instead of death, for the massacre at Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland on February 14, 2018. Fourteen students and three teachers were killed in the massacre.
Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to the murders and the trial is now only to determine his sentence.
Anne Fischer, who ran the nursery Cruz attended since he was a year old, said Cruz did not progress at the same rate as the other children and was smaller. While other children, she said, might ask for water and use a spoon, Cruz might not. She added that Cruz fell over when he tried to run and his head and ears were disproportionate to the rest of his body.
“He was very isolated. She would sit in a corner and watch,” Fischer stated.
He pushed the other kids because “he didn’t know how to express himself,” he said. “If another child had a toy that Nikolas wanted, he would just grab the toy and hit the child’s hand. If a teacher tried to help him to use the spoon and not his hands, he would hit the teacher’s hand.”
He said that Linda Cruz, his adoptive mother, was loving to Nikolas and did the best she might, but was slow to admit that he had problems.
The mother, Fischer added, since the massacre sometimes feels a little guilty and wonders if she might have done something “to make him a better person.”
