FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The deepest wounds of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School don’t show up on surveillance video, crime scene photos or autopsy pictures of the 17 who were slain.
They are written on the faces of the family they left behind. Those family members continued to tell jurors their stories Tuesday as the penalty phase trial of the Parkland gunman continued in a Broward County courtroom.
The victims were remembered as “best friends” of their parents, as aspiring lawyers and athletes, as the generation that was going to change the world. Their futures, their plans, the milestones of their lives were erased on Feb. 14, 2018, by a gunman they never met, a gunman who, in court Tuesday, never raised his head to acknowledge the presence or the pain of their families.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for gunman Nikolas Cruz, 23, who pleaded guilty to the murder and attempted murder of 34 people at the school. His fate, at this stage, will be in the hands of a jury that will decide whether he lives or dies for his crimes.
Before the jury considers that question, the victim’s families have a legal right to be heard.
There is no word to define a parent who has lost a child, said Lori Alhadeff, the mother of victim Alyssa Alhadeff, 14. “It’s indescribable and unable to be named,” she said.
Alyssa was an aspiring attorney and a star on her soccer team. She was captain. She wore No. 8.
“I’m left with a feeling of emptiness,” her mother said. “I look around our home and see photo albums that will never be filled.”
Lori Alhadeff choked up as she described Alyssa as “my best friend and love of my life.”
She was supposed to get married, have a career and children, said her father, Dr. Ilan Alhadeff. While other families enjoy watching their young daughters grow into women and experience life’s milestones, he told the jury, he has to go on old social media posts to hear Alyssa’s infectious laugh. His heart was “ripped out of my damn chest.”
His voice rose at times, almost shouting, as he read his statement. “This is not normal!” he said after describing his young son asking to visit his sister — at her grave. Young boys “should not know of such sorrow, such loss and tragedy.”
He said he has to live his life with anger. “Inside I burn like a damn inferno,” he said. “It took me so long to feel empathy again.”
After he finished his tearful statement, he embraced his wife before leaving the witness stand.
Alyssa’s grandmother, Theresa Robinovitz, began her statement by saying “living after the death of a child is beyond tears.” She said she’s been seeing a psychologist for outbursts of depression and anxiety since the murder as well as “anger which has replaced the pure joy of living each day.”
One of the shooter’s defense attorneys wiped her eyes after Robinovitz gave her tearful testimony.
Also addressing the jury Tuesday morning were the parents of Nicholas Dworet, who planned to study finance at the University of Indianapolis, where he had received a scholarship. He was captain of his high school swim team. And he was a lover of sushi, pizza and Oreo cookies — he kept a stash of cookies hidden in his closet. His parents found them after he died.
Nicholas had big goals, “bigger than most of us dare to dream of,” she said.
He wrote a promise to himself that he kept in his room. “I want to become a Swedish Olympian,” it read. “I will train as hard as I can, in and out of the water. I swear to give it my all and I will let nothing stand in my way.”
His mother now hesitates when strangers ask “How many kids do you have?”
“We will always live in excruciating pain,” his mother, Annika Dworet, said, her voice choked by tears. “We will always live with excruciating pain.”
Gena Hoyer, mother of Luke Hoyer, described a boy who loved to laugh, the youngest of his siblings. His family called him Lukey Bear. Even now she visualizes seeing him in the passenger seat, touching his cheek.
He was the 5-year old who got a goodnight kiss, only to have him wipe it off so he could get yet another. Even as a teen, he found his mom to wish her good night.
Now she pleads with God to “give him a big hug and a kiss for me,” Hoyer said.
“It’s pure agony” knowing he’s not in his bed upstairs, she told the jury. The day he died, he thanked his mom for his Valentine’s Day candy and card. That bag of Skittles stayed there for a year, she said. His clothes are still where he left them, his phone charger is still on his nightstand, notes from his coach are posted on his wall.
“Christmases are almost unbearable.”
Two defense lawyers for Cruz wiped their eyes after her tearful testimony.
“All you see is a broken family,” said Luke’s father, Tom Hoyer. “I don’t know that I ever will feel real peace.”
A representative for Carmen Schentrup’s family read a statement to try to describe the 16-year-old who wanted to attend the University of Florida Honor’s program to become a medical scientist. “She was going to change the world,” the family wrote. Valentine’s Day is now ruined, now a day “not of love, but love taken.”
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter, Jaime Guttenberg, 14, had been shot in the back as she ran down the hallway of her school trying to escape the bullets on the third floor, said the strain on his family has been immeasurable.
He said his son, who has survivor’s guilt, is angry and “wishes it was him” that had died.
“He’s angry at me for convincing him to run,” he said. “Our family is broken.”
Jaime wanted to teach children to walk as a pediatric physical therapist, to be married at 25, and to have two children. Guttenberg said he had his “Dad speech” ready for when she had her first boyfriend. Now he said he never got to throw her a Sweet Sixteen.
Some days the grief is so profound it’s physical, said her mother, Jennifer Guttenberg. Watching her former classmates achieve life milestones is “excruciatingly difficult.”
“There is a deafening silence,” she said. “I miss everything about her from her head to her toes.”
Family and friends of victims Meadow Pollack and Martin Duque, both students, and Aaron Feis, the assistant football coach, also took the stand to try to explain the loss.
“Aaron was the doting father,” read Feis family friend Marilyn Binner, of his daughter and what she has lost. His daughter, now, 13, still asks “what would Daddy say?”
Martin Duque, who dreamed of being a Navy SEAL, was described as an “old soul” who promised to one day buy his immigrant parents a house.
On Monday, families of Joaquin Oliver, Scott Biegel and Alaina Petty shared the devastating loss of their loved ones.
Before the impact statements from the victims’ families were read late Tuesday morning, the jury heard more testimony about the AR-15 style weapon used in the mass shooting. AR 15-bullets are three times as fast as bullets fired from a semiautomatic handgun, George Bello, the crime lab unit manager for the Broward Sheriff’s Office, testified.
Victim impact statements are scheduled to continue Wednesday.
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