The Latest Breaking News from Parkland

Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz is about to be sentenced to life in prison, but not before his victims' family get to call him a monster to his face

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — With his fate sealed and his life spared, the gunman who murdered 17 people stepped into a Broward County courtroom Tuesday to face the ire of those whose lives he shattered.

The two-day sentencing hearing for Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz is about to start

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — He will be a number.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Immediately after the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., promised to support a law raising the minimum legal age for buying assault-style rifles.

Jurors recently handed down their decision in the sentencing trial of Nikolas Cruz, the man who murdered 17 people, mostly children, in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018 in Parkland, Florida. They opted against the death penalty, choosing instead to give Cruz life in prison without parole.

Until 2016, Florida law allowed trial judges to impose a death sentence if a majority of the jurors agreed. But now, anything less than 12-0 means an automatic sentence of life without parole.

The crucial question at the Parkland killer’s sentencing trial wasn’t expressed in so many words on the elaborate verdict forms that took more than an hour to read in court Thursday.

The life sentence about to be imposed on Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz could bring changes to the state's death penalty law