![]() A fence slat on Liberty Park’s perimeter is still emblazoned with the name “Nikolas J. Lynda Cruz was a stay-at-home mom, a dedicated mother who ferried the boys to Zachary’s sports events and involving them in the building of Parkland’s Liberty Park, the friend said. “They built another wing to the house, and the kids just had plenty to do.”Ī golfer and “suit-and-tie man,” the elder Cruz didn’t own guns, Aaronson said. I remember Roger having this entire, like, really extended-type jungle gym out back in the backyard being built,” he said. Roger Cruz was in marketing and he traveled a great deal for business.īut “when he was home,” Aaronson said, “he was all about his kids. “They had a very close relationship with their father,” Ben Aaronson, who was close to Roger and Lynda Cruz, said of the boys. Lynda and Roger adopted that boy, Zachary, as well. Less than a year later, the same woman got pregnant again. The baby’s father was unknown, the friend said. They insisted the birth mother pass drug tests and visit the doctor. He was 61 and had four kids from a previous marriage.Ī close family friend and former neighbor, who asked that her name not be published, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the couple arranged the private adoption through an attorney. She and Roger Cruz had married late in life. ![]() One day before her 49th birthday, Lynda Cruz’s adopted son was born, Sept. His wish was granted, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas was that school. ![]() He desperately wanted to attend a “regular” high school, school records say. The young man has been described as “lost,” “lonely” - and violent. He confessed to shooting 33 former classmates, coaches and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the school he was kicked out of in his junior year 17 of his victims died.Ĭruz’s troubled life is coming into sharper focus, through police and school records and interviews with friends, family and former classmates. Lynda and Roger Cruz knew their new son had challenges, but neither lived to see what he was capable of.Ĭruz sits in the Broward County main jail. And in the outside world, he never made it to 20. By the time he was 16, he was preoccupied with wars, death and killing, school records reveal. By the time he was 6, he’d witnessed his father’s death. She was elated.īy the time he was 3, he had been diagnosed with developmental delays. He had been assigned to special education since kindergarten after being diagnosed with emotional and developmental problems and a speech disability.When Nikolas Jacob Cruz was born in South Florida 19 years ago, his adoptive mother, Lynda, was in the delivery room to watch him emerge. “He couldn’t stand up for himself,” Rodriguez said. Lynn Rodriguez said that when she taught Cruz in 20, he had difficulty staying on task and was “very small” for his age, leading to him being bullied at school, on the bus and by his younger brother at home. Lynda Cruz died of pneumonia four months before the shootings.īefore Browd’s testimony was played, his third and fourth grade special education teacher testified that he was a sad and sometimes violent and disruptive student who didn’t make friends with his classmates. So after three weeks, Lynda Cruz traded in the BMW for another van, Browd said. For example, Lynda and Roger Cruz traded in the family’s van for a BMW SUV when their oldest son was 4, but he didn’t like it because he couldn’t stand up and move like he could in the van. She said his mother didn’t set boundaries for him. ![]() Trying to overcome the emotional, gruesome and graphic evidence and testimony the prosecution presented over three weeks as it laid out the killings, the defense has spent the first five days of its case trying to show that from the time he was conceived in the womb of a crack-smoking, hard-drinking prostitute he was put on a road that created a killer. For the former Stoneman Douglas student to received a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous. A seven-man, five-woman jury will decide whether he is sentenced to death or life without parole. Ĭruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to murdering 14 students and three staff members at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. When she asked if his father had yelled at him, he turned and replied, “No, Daddy is dead.” He didn't get grief counseling for four years. She said Cruz ran past his mother crying. Browd, a close friend of Cruz's late adoptive mother Lynda, testified Monday that Cruz was almost 6 when his father died of a heart attack at the family home. Finai Browd is shown on a courtroom monitor during her videotaped testimony during the penalty phase of the trial of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Monday. ![]()
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