Judge Elizabeth Scherer: OK, ladies and gentlemen, at this time, both sides are going to have the opportunity to present an opening statement and pursuant to the rules of procedure, the State goes first.
lawyer: Your Honor, may we have a brief second?
Judge Elizabeth Scherer: OK
Judge Elizabeth Scherer: Alright, State, whenever you’re ready.
Lead Prosecutor Michael Satz: Thank you, Your Honor.
Lead Prosecutor Michael Satz: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’m going to speak to you about the unspeakable. About this defendant’s goal directed, planned, systematic murder—mass murder—of fourteen children, an athletic director, a teacher and a coach. These brutal murders occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. And it happened on February the 14th, 2018. Three days before these brutal murders, this massacre, the defendant in this case, made a cellphone video on his cellphone and this is what the defendant said. “Hello, my name is Nick. I’m going to be the next school shooter of 2018. My goal is at least 20 people, with an AR-15 and some tracer rounds. It’s going to be a big event. And when you see me on the news, you’ll know who I am. You’re all going to die. Ah yeah. I can’t wait. Ah yeah. I can’t wait.” Cold. Calculated. Manipulative. And deadly.
Now, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is located at 5901 Pine Island Road in Parkland, Florida. It’s bordered by Holmberg Road on the north side, the Sawgrass Expressway on the south side, Pine Island Road on the east side and on the west side is Coral Ridge Drive. But if you, and you’ll see a map, before you get to Coral Ridge Drive to the west, there’s Westglades Middle School and then a Walmart and then there’s Coral Ridge Drive.
You’ll see that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School kind of resembles a college campus. There was approximately 13 buildings spread out over the campus. Most of the buildings were one and two-story buildings, except for one. The one building that is not a one or two-story building is a three-story building and it’s known as the 1200 building or the freshman building. The 1200 building is located on the northeast side of the campus. So, it’s bordered on the north by Holmberg Road and Pine Island Road on the east.
It’s a three-story building and there’s two entrances to the 1200 building. There’s an entrance on the east side and there’s an entrance on the west side. And both those east and west entrances open up to the first-floor hallway. The entrances are double door on the east side and double door on the west side. And to the right of those double doors there’s a secondary door both on the east side and on the west side and this secondary door leads up into the first-floor landing of the stairwell. And the stairwells go up to the third floor both on the east side and on the west side. There are 10 classrooms on each floor of the 1200 building. There’s six classrooms on the south side of the hall. There’s four classrooms on the north side of the hall. And that holds true for the first floor, second floor and the third floor.
And Marjory Stoneman Douglas, back on February 14th, 2018, had a surveillance system and there are approximately 76 cameras that spread out through the campus. And these cameras were motion-activated and what that means is they have to detect motion before they record. So, if there’s nothing moving, they don’t record. In the 1200 building, there were 13 cameras. There were three cameras on the first floor, three cameras on the second floor and three cameras on the third floor. And these cameras are installed in the ceiling. So, there’s a camera on the east side in the ceiling, a camera in the center in the ceiling and a camera on the west in the ceiling; three cameras. And there’s three cameras just like that in the ceilings on the first floor, second floor and third floor. The camera on the east side up on the ceiling focuses west. The camera in the center of the ceiling focuses west. The camera on the west side focuses east. And that’s true for the first floor, second floor and third floor. And there are two additional cameras in each stairwell. There’s one on the third floor of the stairwell, one on the second floor of the stairwell, and that’s true for the west stairwell and the east stairwell.
There are 13 cameras in the 1200 building. There are no cameras in the classrooms. There are no cameras in the classrooms. And, again, these camera are motion-activated. So, you will see a surveillance video from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School from February the 14th, 2018. You will see the defendant on the first floor, fire a rifle, shoot and kill nine students, the athletic director and a coach. And the athletic director and the coach were both campus monitors. You will see the defendant fire his rifle six times on the second floor. And you will see him shoot and kill five students on the third floor and a teacher on the third floor. You will see him wound thirteen other students on the first floor; and you’ll see him wound three other students on the third floor and wounding of a teacher.
You will not see every single second of that surveillance video. You say, “Why?” Because it’s what? It’s motion-activated. When the defendant fired his rifle, the percussion in the hallway was so loud that it caused the ceiling tile, the dust from the ceiling tile, to fall down. And when the dust from the ceiling, and it looks like smoke, and when it comes down, it prevented the cameras from detecting some of the motion of the defendant. But most of it is there and you will see it.
The cameras are motion-activated. You will also learn that because of the percussion of the defendant firing his rifle, it also affected the fire alarm system. So at 2:20, 2:38, and I’ll get back to why that time is important, this fire alarm goes off because the fire alarm system was not able to detect the difference between what?—between smoke and dust.
The defendant attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School from August the 15th, 2015, to February the 8th, 2017. And he was also a member of the JROTC. Let me take you back to Valentine’s Day, February the 14th, 2018. A Uber stops in front of the east gate to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It’s a pedestrian gate on the east side on Pine Island Road. It’s a female Uber driver. The defendant gets out of the seat, the rear seat of the Uber. I think it was a Rav4. But he gets out, and he’s carrying a black case and a backpack. Now, school’s in session, it’s Wednesday, February the 14th, 2018. It’s approximately 2:19 PM. The school starts at 7:40 AM, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and the last class ends at 2:40. A short the gates open for [sic] in the morning for students to enter and go to class and then they close. And then they open again, so, right before school ends at 2:40, 20 or 30 minutes before. So what? The students can leave the campus.
So it’s 2:19 PM. The defendant is carrying a black case and a backpack. And what he has in his case, what he has in his case, is a Smith & Wesson 5.56 caliber rifle. And this rifle, base is commonly known as an AR-15, this rifle fires not only 5.56 caliber ammunition, but also fires .223 caliber ammunition. The gun will fire both. This gun is commonly known as an AR-15; it’s a semi-automatic rifle. This weapon will fire as many bullets as it contains in the firearm magazine. And this is the way this 5.6 Smith & Wesson M&P 15T; F16214 is the serial number.
This is the way this gun operates. What you do is you load the firearm magazine with bullets. And the bullet is about like this for a 5.56 and a .223. And you put those bullets in the magazine and you load them in the magazine and the bullets will go in as many as the magazine will hold. So, if it’s a 40-round magazine, you can stick in 40 bullets. If it’s a 30 round magazine, you can stick in 30 bullets. So you fill up the magazine and then you take the magazine and with how many bullets you have in it and you stick it into the magazine well of the rifle. And then you pull back the lever and you charge a bullet that goes into the firing chamber and you pull the trigger. This weapon will fire as quickly as you can pull the trigger. And that’s what the defendant had.
And the Uber driver picked up the defendant to bring him to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School from 7200 Loxahatchee Road. 72 [sic] Loxahatchee Road was the home of Kimberly and James Snead and their son, JT Snead. JT Snead was a friend of the defendant’s. They both went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School together. They were both a member of the JROTC together. And a short time after Thanksgiving of 2017, the defendant came to live with the Sneads. He had his own bedroom. He was attending school. He was working at the Dollar Tree. The Sneads took the defendant in and offered him a place to live. Why? The defendant’s adoptive mother passed away November 1st, 2017. The defendant needed a place to live; the Sneads made the offer; defendant moved in with them. And it was a short time after Thanksgiving. These murders happened, when? February the 14th, 2018.
On this particular, and when the defendant arrived at Marjory Stoneman [sic] High School, on Wednesday, February 14th, 2018, he had been planning to be a school shooter, long before he moved in with the Sneads and long before his mother passed away. On this particular Wednesday, on this particular Valentine’s Day, the defendant gets out of the Uber. He goes through the passenger gate. He’s wearing his backpack. He’s carrying his black case. It was a black Cabela bag case with the rifle in it. And he walks about 360 feet from Pine Island Road to the east entrance double doors. He walks in through the east double doors, makes an immediate righthand turn and walks into the bottom floor of the stairwell, of the east stairwell. He takes his rifle out of the Cabela bag, black bag. And as he’s preparing his rifle to fire, in walks a student, Christopher McKenna.
Christopher McKenna was a student in classroom 1216. 1216 is on the first floor. It’s the second classroom from the east double door entrances. Christopher McKenna was out on a bathroom pass and he was going up to the second floor because, at the time, the first-floor restrooms and the third-floor restrooms were locked. And so the security could watch people go to the second floor because they were concerned about, you know, different activities in the first floor and third floor kids going there vaping or hiding out or whatever. So for a security measure they did lock the bathroom doors on the first floor and the third floor.
So, Christopher McKenna gets a pass from his teacher, was Ms. Hass in 1216. She taught English. Approximately 30 students in her class. He gets his pass, walks down the hall, bumps into a couple kids. And you’ll see the video of him bumping fists with two of the students. And he walks into the stairwell as the defendant, Nikolas Cruz, is preparing his M P 15 rifle. And he said, the defendant says to Christopher McKenna, “You better get out of here. Something bad is about to happen.”
Christopher McKenna runs out. Remember I described the secondary door that’s in the stairwell? He runs out that east door and he runs to find a campus monitor. When he runs out, the defendant enters the first-floor hallway. And when he enters the first-floor hallway, there are four students in the hallway. He gets out and he fires his weapon at the four students in the hallway. The time, 2:21:33.
2:21:33, the massacre begins. Here’s who the first four students were in the first-floor hallway. Ashley Baez was walking west in the hallway in front of classroom 1215. Let me describe what existed on the south side, you know, there’s six classrooms on the south side. So, the first classroom on the south side is 1218. The next class, the numbers aren’t, you know, consistent, but the next classroom is 1215, classroom 1215.
So, sitting in front of classroom 1215 is a student, Gina Montalto. And she asked permission from the teacher in 1215. By the way, it was a personalization class, so you can catch up on your homework and do different things. Different from when I went to school, but you can do whatever you want and homework, whatever, like a study hall. So, she asked Ms. Matlock if she could go out in the hall and work on her computer because it was more private and she could get more work done on her project. Ms. Matlock had offered to her to go to a different classroom or somewhere else. Gina said, “No, fine, I’d like to do that.” So, she’s sitting. And when you watch the video, you’ll see her legs sticking out.