Jurors get first glimpse at AR-15-style rifle used to kill 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Broward prosecutor Mike Satz held the semi-automatic rifle in his hands, carefully, and asked the witness if it was the weapon she found abandoned at the scene at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018.

A man was reported missing; a gun was reported stolen. A shallow backyard grave led to the arrest of the accused killer.

“It is,” said the witness, former Broward Sheriff’s Office crime scene detective Gloria Crespo, now a sergeant with the agency.

It was the jury’s first look at the AR-15-style rifle that Nikolas Cruz used to stalk the hallways, stairwells and classrooms of the Parkland high school, wounding and killing as many as had the misfortune of being in his path. It also may have been the first time family members of the victims have laid eyes on the weapon.

Cruz, 23, has already pleaded guilty, but a jury is deciding whether he should be executed or sentenced to life in prison.

On day 6 of testimony in the penalty trial, prosecutors brought jurors even closer to the rampage that left 17 dead in the 1200 building of the high school campus. Surveillance videos showing the murders from a detached distance were supplemented with crime scene and autopsy photos so grisly that officials are taking great pains to keep them from the public.

The pictures show blood and bone. In the cases of victims Peter Wang, Meadow Pollack and Christopher Hixon, they also show suffering — all three survived the first bullets that struck them and waited helplessly as Cruz approached them to complete the mission he assigned himself.

The rampage started with what seemed like a routine Uber ride.

Driver Laura Zechinni recalled her passenger as being anxious and nervous, but the trip from Loxahatchee Road, where she picked up the killer, was otherwise uneventful. Zechinni remembered that he carried a bag and told her he was on his way to a music class.

His rifle was in the bag.

Family members wore looks of concern in the presence of the rifle. Helena Ramsay’s father, Vinnie, wouldn’t look up. Most look like they braced for the moment, which passed quickly.

They also listened to deputy medical examiners give graphic details of the wounds suffered by victims. Annika Dworet burst into tears as one of the doctors described the fatal wounds of her son, Nicholas.

Family members shook their heads in disbelief as Chief Medical Examiner Wendolyn Sneed explained that JRORTC cadet Peter Wang was shot 12 times, not including a shrapnel wound to the left elbow. Four of the bullets were to his head. Any one of them would have been fatal.

While the jury watched Wang get shot in surveillance video, Cruz kept his left hand over his head. He looked twice toward one of the monitors briefly but spent more time scribbling, looking down or looking over at his lawyer.

“It looks like he (Wang) was wounded as he came running toward the end,” Sneed said as she watched the video.

On the floor, he was still moving his legs.

From this, Sneed concluded that Wang had not yet been shot in the head when he fell outside the stairwell entrance.

Over and over again, as the wounds are described, the families of the victims followed along, sometimes unable to contain their horror. Max Schachter, in particular, opened his mouth, shook his head and covered his face as the witness testified about how Wang died. Schachter’s son Alex, a popular band student, was among those murdered.

Other witnesses Monday included Justin Colton, the last of 17 surviving, physically wounded victims to testify, and Miguel Suarez, a crime scene detective with the Broward Sheriff’s Office who collected evidence of bullet casings and other projectiles found on the second floor of the 1200 building.

Colton, who was a freshman at the time, said he was writing an essay for his fourth-period English class when he heard the loud sounds of gunfire.

“Everyone got up and ran. They all scattered around the classroom trying to take cover,” Colton recalled. “As I was running toward the back of the room, my right arm and lower right back were hit.”

He said he still has a couple of fragments in his lower back and still has difficulty moving his back.

“I can’t do some motions like working out because of my back,” he said.

Suarez described identifying and photographing bullet particles on the second floor. Two other detectives examined the first and third floor, he said.

He described broken windows and spent shell cases all over the floors, on several desks and on the walls.

Testimony is scheduled to resume at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

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