Years after the massacre, families who lost loved ones in Parkland school shooting hope for a shred of closure

Mitch and Annika Dworet held hands in a Broward County courtroom on Friday, watching the gunman who killed their son.

“We want him to get the death penalty,” Mitch Dworet said. “We want him to suffer.”

It’s been more than three years since 17-year-old Nicholas Dworet and 16 others were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. It was Feb. 14, 2018, when Nikolas Cruz came to campus with an AR-15 style rifle and opened fire in the school’s 1200 building.

Cruz is expected to plead guilty to the murder charges next week. On Friday he pleaded guilty to attacking a deputy who was guarding him in jail.

The Dworets appeared stoic throughout Friday’s proceeding, and said they’re willing to sit through as many court appearances as it takes to bring their son’s killer to justice.

“We want justice to prevail,” said Annika Dworet, wearing a button with her son’s picture. It reads: “Forever in our hearts.”

Justice moves slowly. And as families have waited, they have taken different paths toward that common goal — some have escaped South Florida, others have become activists, leaders and elected officials. They have stood beside presidents and governors. Their voices rising to be heard.

But at their core, they are still grieving, angry parents or spouses trying to navigate a way forward. At the end of the day, after they’ve advocated for safer schools, stricter gun safety laws, accountability for failures, they come home to empty spaces.

They have a long and grueling road ahead, but these new developments could be the start of the last leg toward justice. Like a faint light at the end of a nightmarish tunnel.

Friday’s plea was just the first step in a series that closes a significant chapter in the Stoneman Douglas ordeal. If he pleads guilty on Wednesday it would spare jurors and families the spectacle of a lengthy trial and the presentation of evidence to secure a guilty verdict against someone whose guilt was never in serious question.

Manuel Oliver’s son Joaquin was one of the murdered. “Shot four times and we don’t know how long he suffered, an innocent person,” Oliver said Friday. “Any punishment will not even be close to what happened to my son.

He will not be in court Wednesday. “What am I going to do there. It’s not going to change anything and it’s not going to make me feel worse or better,” he said. “I understand the death penalty is still on the table and I think that’s the right thing. I need this chapter to be over so we can go back to the real problem, regulations to the gun industry.”

Scott Beigel was a geography teacher and cross-country coach at the high school when he was shot and killed.

“It is 1,340 days today since my son was murdered and here we sit still professing what he’s going to do,” Beigel’s mother, Linda Schulman, said of the shooter. “It does not get easier. Every day it gets harder.”

She said it’s about time defense attorneys stop dragging their feet. She’s tired of waiting.

“As far as feeling any relief, there is no relief. But we all want closure. I still want to be alive when this case comes to an end,” she said, concerned a death penalty case could drag out for well over another decade. “I want the case to move along. Every time I see him on the other end of my computer screen it brings everything so fresh as the day it happened.”

Ten days ago, when potential jurors walked into a Broward courtroom for the jailhouse assault case, many were shocked to the point of tears when they encountered the confessed Parkland shooter in the flesh.

For some, it was too much. Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer excused two women who began to cry shortly after they saw Cruz. A third woman became too emotional to answer questions and was also dismissed.

A host of them openly admitted they could not be fair.

The reactions again raised questions about the effect a trial would have on the community, especially for educators, surviving victims and families who lost loved ones.

There’s no doubt sitting through a trial and reliving the trauma would be heart wrenching, yet many people feel adamantly that Cruz’s fate should be decided by a jury of his peers, not lawyers.

Cruz has offered to plead guilty before, but only in exchange for a life sentence. Prosecutors are pushing for the death penalty.

Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year old daughter Jaime was shot in the back as she tried to run for her life, waited patiently on Friday morning to be let into the courtroom.

”Whatever the defense does today, it doesn’t change anything for the victims. Remember the victims. Remember Jaime,” he said. “I was prepared to sit through the trial, I want him to get the death penalty and this is a ploy to make that less likely. This is not an easy thing to go through.”

There’s also the matter of the 1200 building. It was left standing as evidence in the trial, and it serves as an unavoidable physical reminder of the massacre for students and educators on campus every day, such as Eric Garner.

He’s still the TV teacher at Douglas. As the tragedy unfolded he had sent dozens of students into his classroom and pushed a bookshelf against the locked door. He tried his best to keep them calm.

“I’m torn on the fact we won’t have a full trial,” he said Friday, but “the end of this chapter has to happen.”

“To be honest if this saves us two months, three months of having to deal with it on a daily basis then this might be the better option just from a mental health standpoint,” he said. “I respect the people who feel they need that day in court but this chapter just has to end.”

He hopes that by moving the process along, the building where the tragedy happened will finally be removed.

Maybe now, authorities can be closer to allowing the “release [of] the building and [have it] come down,” he said. “That’s a daily visual reminder of everybody walking on campus. It’s a monument to a horrific event that hopefully can be taken down sooner than later.”

Ernie Rospierski lost six of his students during the shooting.

“It’s nice to see it might not be a months’ long process; and a couple weeks, which is preferential,” he said. “I am still to this day getting subpoenaed for testimony and it would be great to have less of that.”

Regardless of eliminating the guilty phase of the trial, “there’s not a possibility of moving on, that idea is a false one. But it’s one of those things if I don’t have to relive it every couple months that would be great.”

Rospierski previously told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that he has replayed the horrific events over in his mind. But was very careful to avoid the what-ifs, he said at the time. Eventually, he somehow was able to reach a standoff with the darkest elements of the nightmare.

Nobody who was on the campus that day can “move on” and forget, he said. Rather it’s trying to learn to “go on” instead.

Debbie Hixon’s husband was Chris Hixon, 49, a wrestling coach and athletic director at Stoneman Douglas. Law enforcement records show Hixon ran toward the shooter in an effort to disarm him.

On Friday she was relieved “not to have to do it two times, I think it will speed up the process and anything that will speed up the process is a blessing because it’s been too long and we would like this to be over.”

Hixon said she wants the shooter to get the death penalty, and feels confident prosecutors will be able to “present all those same facts in a sentencing phase.”

She hopes a shorter process will avoid “juror fatigue.”

“I’m confident the State Attorney’s Office is going to present what they need to present to get the death penalty. I hope the jury understands this is a person who can’t be rehabilitated,” she said.

“I can tell you hell is waiting for him, and that’s where he needs to go. I’ve never believed in the death penalty in my whole life but life circumstances change and this is the only answer here.”

Others feel ambivalent about the outcome of the trial.

Andy Pollack’s daughter Meadow was murdered at the high school after taking nine bullets. She was a senior and 18 years old when she died, the youngest of Pollack’s three children and his only daughter.

Eliminating the first trial doesn’t make him blink.

“He’s never going to see outside again, either they kill him by lethal injection or pipe him to death in prison. I’m not thinking about it. I don’t care what happens to him,” Pollack said. “What happens to this thing is out of my control. What was in my control was holding people accountable like [former Sheriff Scott] Israel, [former Schools Superintendent Robert] Runcie. I did what I could. That was more important to me. I focused on things [where] I can make a difference in society.”

Pollack channeled his fury to hold many people accountable for the failings. He sued a school deputy, got a campus watchman fired, campaigned to elect new school board members and a sympathetic governor.

Still, “I hope he goes in the way of Jeffrey Dahmer,” Pollack said, referring to the serial killer who brutally killed 15 men and was beaten to death by a fellow inmate. “Put him in prison [and see] how they treat a murderer who kills children.

“The quicker he gets into a prison and out of a jail the better.”

Brooke Baitinger can be reached at: bbaitinger@sunsentinel.com, 954-422-0857 or Twitter: @bybbaitinger

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com or 572-2008 or Twitter: @Lisa J. Huriash