Parkland School Shooter’s Home Was Ruled By Chaos, Violence, Court Hears

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Chaos reigned in the home where Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz grew up, according to testimony in his ongoing sentencing trial.

He and his half-brother Zachary tormented their adoptive, widowed mother Linda. By the time Cruz reached the middle school in early 2010, the pair had fists and baseball bats on the walls, leaving gaping holes. They destroyed televisions and carved furniture, witnesses said.

Zachary may have been two years younger, but he was bigger and stronger and picked on his brother mercilessly – one social worker recalls Zachary climbing on the counter and stepping in Nicholas’s cereal, while eating.

Linda Cruz called sheriff’s deputies to the family’s 4,500-square-foot (420-square-meter) home at least two dozen times between 2012 and 2016 to deal with one son, the other, or both. Most of the calls were for fighting, destroying her property, disrespecting her, or running away.

“Nicolas was very easily misled, and I think Zachary got some pleasure out of pushing Nikolas’ buttons,” testified Frederick Kravitz, one of Cruise’s child psychologists. In turn, “they were very good at pushing (their mother’s) buttons.”

Nikolas Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to killing 17 students and staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14, 2018. His trial has only to decide whether he will be sentenced to death or life without parole. replacement. The case resumes on Monday after a one-week break.

In an effort to counter that, Assistant Public Defender Melissa McNeil and her team have made Cruz’s story the center of their case, hoping at least one juror will vote to life. The death sentence must be unanimous.

The defense wants to show that from Cruz’s birth to a crack-drinking, crack-smoking prostitute in Fort Lauderdale, he never got the help he fully needed, even as he spiraled further out of control.

And nowhere was that more evident than in the home that Roger and Linda Cruz built in Parkland, an upscale suburb of Fort Lauderdale. They adopted Nicholas at birth in 1998, and in 2000, Zachary, who had a different birth father.

Linda Cruz, who turned 50 shortly after adopting Nicolas, was a host mom. Roger Cruz, then 61, owned a successful marketing business.

Linda Cruz “wanted a child, always wanted a child. So after she had Nicholas, she felt like her family was complete,” testified friend Trish Davani-Westerlind. “He was a sweet little baby. She’s going to go and get him all those sailor outfits. She was just the happiest I had ever seen her.

But in preschool, Cruz showed extreme behavior. Neighbors and teachers testified that he hit and bit other children and did not communicate. He was anxious, fell when running and could not use utensils. Nicholas began seeing psychiatrists and psychologists at age 3 and did not fully speak or learn to go potty until 4.

At age 5, just as Cruz was starting kindergarten, he witnessed his father suffer a fatal heart attack in the family den. This left Linda Cruz alone in her mid-50s with two sons who would have challenged a much younger couple.

Unemployed, she became paranoid about spending, keeping her air conditioner thermostats in the 80s (25 to 30 Celsius) and turning off unused appliances. A friend said her monthly electric bill was $80, a fraction of what a homeowner in South Florida would typically pay.

She padlocked the refrigerator so her sons couldn’t eat without permission, and kept it so poorly stocked that neighbors gave her groceries.

Friends have given conflicting testimony about whether Linda Cruz was really struggling financially or had wealth she didn’t want to spend.

In both cases, she had expenses that other parents did not have. Cruise’s mental health treatment was not fully covered by insurance. He loved online, often violent video games, but hated losing—it caused him to destroy televisions and damage walls. She sometimes locked his video game advisor in her car as punishment — and Cruise at least once broke a window to get it back.

“She was a little scared of him,” neighbor Paul Gold testified.

Despite Cruz’s outbursts, Linda Cruz told teachers and counselors that he was gentle and loving, like a mama’s boy. Friends testified that it wasn’t just a front – Cruz and his mother had a strong, often tender attachment, and she favored him over his brother.

Still, Zachary remained popular in the neighborhood while Cruz was an outcast — and not just with kids.

Stephen Schuessler testified that shortly after he moved in nearby, his landlord called the Cruz boys and pointed to Nicholas, then about 10.

“He’s the weird one, aren’t you Nikki?” Schussler remembered the woman’s words. Cruz “shrunk” and “looked like a snail when you put salt on it.”

But Cruz’s behavior was often strange and sometimes violent. When he was 9, a parent called the police after hitting her child in the head with a rock. When his dog died after eating a poisonous toad, he began killing amphibians. In middle school, his tantrums disrupted classes and he peppered his homework with racial slurs, swastikas, obscenities, and figurines having sex or shooting themselves.

Linda Cruz was so overwhelmed in Cruz’s early teenage years that a social services agency was hired to help. That brought case manager Tiffany Forrest to the home. She said Linda Cruz complained that Nikolas didn’t want to bathe, so Forrest tried to explain the importance of hygiene to him. Cruz stood up, went outside and jumped into the pool dressed. Then he climbed up.

“I was taking a bath,” he told Forrest.

In the coming weeks, Cruz’s lawyers are expected to present testimony about his transfer to a school for students with emotional and behavioral problems, his stay at Stoneman Douglas and to call his brother to testify. Zachary now lives in Virginia with two benefactors.

Their mother died less than four months before the shooting.

AP writer Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale contributed to this report.