Cruz sat in silence as Judge Elizabeth Scherer formally handed down the life sentence. The 24-year-old will be transferred to federal prisons, where he will remain until his death. The formal sentencing came a day after family members of the victims had a chance to address Cruz directly in court, venting their grief and anger. Nikolas Cruz sits at the defense table for his sentencing hearing at the Broward County Circuit Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Wednesday. (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel via AP, Pool) Many wished him a painful death and expressed the hope that he would be raped or killed in prison. “This creature has no redeemable value,” Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex was killed in the massacre, said Tuesday. Addressing Cruz, Schachter said he hoped “other prisoners you meet in your new life will inflict this pain on you, hopefully 17 times over, until you cry out for mercy, just like your victims.” “We hope that you, the monster who did this to our son, will endure a painful existence for the rest of your days,” said Eric Wikander, the father of student Ben Wikander, who has undergone seven surgeries to repair his wounds. Students walk out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on February 14, 2018. (Sun-Sentinel via ZUMA Wire) “You stole him from us,” said Debra Hixon, whose husband, athletic director Chris Hixon, was killed in the massacre. “And you didn’t get the justice you deserved.” “You’re a bigoted hater,” Sam Fuentes, a student who survived the shooting, told Cruz in court Wednesday. “You shot me in the foot. And if you looked me in the face, as I look at you now, you would see the marks of the hot shrapnel embedded in it. “You will not forget me,” he added. The two-day hearing capped a three-month sentencing trial that included emotional testimony, graphic video and a crime scene tour of the school’s freshman building, which has been closed since the Feb. 14, 2018, massacre. Cruz was 19 when he used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle to carry out the attack at his former school. He fired 140 shots during the seven-minute attack, which he had planned for seven months. He pleaded guilty last year. The story continues Linda Beigel Schulman, right, whose son Scott was killed, hugs Debbie Hixon, who lost her husband, at Nikolas Cruz’s sentencing hearing Tuesday. (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel via AP, Pool) Last month, a 12-judge jury issued a unanimous verdict recommending that Cruz be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He faced the death penalty, but the jury failed to reach the unanimity required by state law to impose that sentence. On each of the 17 counts, jurors found all the aggravating factors — including that the killings were carried out in a “cold, calculated and premeditated” manner — but that they did not outweigh the mitigating circumstances found by the defense. Cruz’s lawyers had argued that his mother’s heavy drinking and drug use during pregnancy left him with “fetal alcohol spectrum disorder” that eventually led to his school shooting, one of the deadliest in the country. US history. It was the deadliest mass murder ever to go to trial in the United States. Nine other people in the US who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or shortly after their attacks by suicide or police gunfire, according to the Associated Press. The suspect in the 2019 massacre of 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, is currently awaiting trial. “The legal system should protect and deliver justice, justice, justice,” Patricia Oliver, the 17-year-old son of Joaquin, who was killed in Parkland, told the court on Tuesday. “If this, the worst mass shooting to ever go to trial, doesn’t deserve the death penalty, what does?”
