FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The Uber driver who transported the killer to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on the day of the mass shooting recalled him being anxious and nervous.
Other than that, Laura Zechinni described in court on Monday a rather uneventful trip on Feb. 14, 2018, from Loxahatchee Road, where she picked up the killer, to the campus, not knowing he was about to kill 17 and injure 17 others.
She was one of the first witnesses during the second week of the sentencing trial at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale where a jury will decide if confessed gunman Nikolas Cruz will be executed or receive life in prison without parole.
Zechinni recalled him carrying a bag that she thought was a music case.
“He told me he was going to a music class. He had a big bag,” she said.
The gunman spent most of the 12-minute, 57-second ride on his phone, Zechinni said. Her earnings for the trip: $4.53.
Other witnesses Monday morning were Justin Colton, one of the 17 students who was shot by Cruz, 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.
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