![]() So after three weeks, Lynda Cruz traded in the BMW for another van, Browd said. For example, Lynda and Roger Cruz traded in the family’s van for a BMW SUV when their oldest son was 4, but he didn’t like it because he couldn’t stand up and move like he could in the van. She said his mother didn’t set boundaries for him. Trying to overcome the emotional, gruesome and graphic evidence and testimony the prosecution presented over three weeks as it laid out the killings, the defense has spent the first five days of its case trying to show that from the time he was conceived in the womb of a crack-smoking, hard-drinking prostitute he was put on a road that created a killer. For the former Stoneman Douglas student to received a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous. A seven-man, five-woman jury will decide whether he is sentenced to death or life without parole. Ĭruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to murdering 14 students and three staff members at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. When she asked if his father had yelled at him, he turned and replied, “No, Daddy is dead.” He didn't get grief counseling for four years. She said Cruz ran past his mother crying. Browd, a close friend of Cruz's late adoptive mother Lynda, testified Monday that Cruz was almost 6 when his father died of a heart attack at the family home. He said Cruz had some signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder - for example, he always had to have exactly eight chicken nuggets.Finai Browd is shown on a courtroom monitor during her videotaped testimony during the penalty phase of the trial of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Monday. "He was extremely fearful his mother would forget to pick him up (at school) and he would be stuck there," Kravitz said, even though that never happened. He said Cruz had a fear of abandonment because of his father's death and his adoption and had an active "bad imagination." "He stood out like a sore thumb," he said. ![]() When he was 8, he acted like a 6-year-old, at best, Kravitz said. ![]() Testimony has shown that his birth mother was a street prostitute who abused cocaine and alcohol and as a toddler he was developmentally delayed, often violent towards other children and teased and bullied for his small stature, unusual appearance and odd behavior. The defense has focused on the mental and emotional problems Cruz exhibited from his earliest days. If one juror votes for life, that will be his sentence. The defense is trying to overcome the prosecution's case, which featured surveillance video of Cruz, then 19, mowing down students and staff with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle as he stalked a three-story building for seven minutes, photos of the aftermath and a jury visit to the building.įor Cruz to receive a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous. She was 57, depressed from her husband's sudden 2003 death and dealing with two "tumultuous" young children, he said. He said that was a major issue - Lynda Cruz would agree that her son needed more consistent treatment and she needed to be more consistent in her discipline of him and his younger half-brother, Zachary, but did not follow through. Kravitz said that while he suggested weekly sessions for Cruz, his mother only brought him 15 times over a 13-month span, a decade before he murdered 17 people at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. But she also said he was friendly and got along fine with his peers - claims that a neighbor, preschool teachers and an elementary school special education counselor have testified were not true. FORT LAUDERDALE - A psychologist who treated Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz when he was 8 years old testified Wednesday that Cruz was a "peculiar child" who had many behavioral and developmental issues but his widowed mother seemed overwhelmed and wasn't consistent in her discipline or in getting him treatment.įrederick Kravitz said he began treating Cruz in 2007 on a referral from Cruz's psychiatrist with Lynda Cruz telling him her adopted son suffered from anxiety and nervousness and had trouble controlling his temper.
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