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Shooter who killed 17 people at Florida school is sentenced to life in prison

The gunman responsible for the death of 17 students and staff at a Florida school, Nikolas Cruz, was formally sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday.

Last month, a jury voted to spare Cruz, 24, the death penalty, ruling for life in prison without the possibility of parole for one of the deadliest mass shootings in US history.

Last year, Cruz pleaded guilty to premeditated murder in connection with the February 14, 2018, shooting, and faced a three-month sentencing trial earlier this year.

Broward County Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer agreed to a request by the prosecution to allow relatives of Cruz’s victims to go to court before sentencing was handed down. The sentencing process began on Tuesday with the victims’ impact statements.

Several relatives of the victims criticized the jury’s decision and criticized state law’s requirement that the 12 jurors be unanimous in sentencing a person sentenced to execution. Some relatives also chided Cruz’s defense lawyers, who futilely objected to the judge on Tuesday, claiming the accused had a constitutional right to legal representation.

Relatives of many victims went directly to Cruz, who wore large glasses and a mask to protect himself against Covid-19 at a table next to his public defenders. Anne Ramsay, mother of 17-year-old Helena Ramsay, said he was “pure evil”; Inez Hixon called him a “domestic terrorist” for killing her father-in-law, the school’s athletic director, Chris Hixon.

Cruz was 19 years old at the time of her attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, about 50 kilometers north of the courthouse in Fort Lauderdale. He had been expelled from school.

Some of the survivors have gone on to organize a youth-led movement for stricter gun regulations in the United States, which has the highest rate of private gun ownership in the world and where mass shootings have become a regular occurrence.

Source: CNN Brasil

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