Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz’s defense says he was ‘poisoned in the womb’ by his mother’s drinking

The defense attorney for Parkland mass school shooter Nikolas Cruz urged the jury to spare his life, arguing that he was ‘poisoned in the womb’ from his biological mother’s drinking and drug use during pregnancy and that ‘his brain was irretrievably broken.’

Lead public defender Melisa McNeill told jurors on Monday that ‘there is no defense for this crime‘ committed by Cruz – who killed 17 people at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day 2018 in Parkland, Florida. 

But McNeill cited brain damage linked to fetal drug and alcohol exposure as reason not to impose the death penalty. 

‘Because of that, his brain was irretrievably broken, through no fault of his own,’ McNeill told the jury.

Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty last October to committing premeditated murder at the high school, about 30 miles north of Fort Lauderdale, in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Cruz killed 14 students and three staff members.

Nikolas Cruz’s attorney urged the jury to spare his life as she revealed the school shooter was ‘poisoned in the womb’ and that his brain was ‘irretrievably broken’ by his mother’s drinking

Lead public defender Melisa McNeill cited brain damage linked to fetal drug and alcohol exposure as reason not to impose the death penalty on Cruz

McNeill argued that instead of the death penalty, Cruz should instead receive life in prison without parole due to mitigating factors including lifelong developmental delays and mental-health disorders that arose from his biological mother’s drug and alcohol abuse during pregnancy.

McNeill said she would present witnesses including people who knew him and medical experts during a trial in which jurors must decide whether to sentence him to death or to life in prison without possibility of parole. 

‘We must understand the person behind the crime,’ McNeill said. 

‘I stand before you today in a space filled with overwhelming sadness, painstaking grief, anger and trauma.’

McNeill had deferred her opening statement from the trial’s first day of July 18 to the beginning of her team’s case. A rare strategy, it appears part of a broader plan to acknowledge the horror of Cruz’s slaughter and not anger jurors by challenging it.

She told the jurors on Monday that Cruz was born to a ‘homeless, mentally ill’ mother who was an addict who used alcohol and drugs during her pregnancy.

‘Because Nikolas was bombarded by all of those things, he was poisoned in the womb. Because of that, his brain was irretrievably broken, through no fault of his own,’ she said.

McNeill told the jurors on Monday that Cruz was born to a ‘homeless, mentally ill’ mother Brenda Woodard (pictured) who was an addict who used alcohol and drugs during pregnancy

Woodard, pictured in a mugshot, gave Cruz up in a private adoption. She died in 2021

An undated photograph of Woodard is shown on a screen in the courtroom during the trial

She said that throughout much of his life his developmental and behavioral problems were not addressed.

Yet even though teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas recognized he was a threat to himself and to others, he did not get adequate care, and any support he had disappeared after he was forced to drop out in 2017 aged 18.

One year later, on February 14, 2018, Cruz returned to the school with a high-powered assault rifle and killed 17 people, including 14 students.

McNeill said the circumstances of his birth and upbringing should mitigate the punishment, and that life in prison was more appropriate than execution.

‘Nikolas Cruz’s decision to take an Uber to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and kill as many people as he could possibly kill is not where Nikolas Cruz’s story starts,’ she said.

McNeill said Cruz was born with fetal alcohol stress disorder and assessed at three with antisocial personality disorder.

His birth mother gave him up in a brokered private adoption, she said — but his adoptive mother Lynda Cruz also became an alcoholic, and he grew up in a broken home.

The gunman (pictured as a baby) and was adopted by Lynda Cruz (pictured) who died in 2017 – three months before his murderous rampage 

Cruz, pictured, was said to be ‘gun obsessed’. He was armed with at least one AR-15 rifle and had ‘multiple magazines’ when he stormed the school

After Cruz left school, McNeill said he ended up living with his brother and mother in a home where police and social services were called dozens of times after violent incidents.

‘He didn’t stop being brain-damaged. He didn’t stop being emotionally handicapped. He didn’t stop having language impairment. He didn’t stop needing services. But they were all gone,’ she said.

Jurors, who visited the scene of the school and were shown harrowing videos of the mass shooting by prosecutors in July, have to vote unanimously if he is to be executed.

Aiming to persuade just one juror otherwise, McNeill stressed that each jury member has to make ‘an individualized moral decision’ on whether Cruz’s life story mitigates the punishment.

‘We will tell you Nikolas’ life story so that we can give you reasons to vote for life,’ she said.

McNeill on Monday acknowledged the horror of Cruz’s crime but reminded the jurors that they were under no obligation to vote for death even ‘in the worst case imaginable. And it is arguable that this is the worst case imaginable.’

Under Florida law, a jury must be unanimous in its decision to recommend that a judge sentence Cruz to be executed.

Cruz is seen inside the school in an image released during the investigation. The building’s interior has been left nearly intact since the shooting: Bloodstains still smear the floor, and doors and walls are riddled with bullet holes

Surveillance video shows Cruz inside the school in 2018. Jurors retraced the path Cruz followed on February 14, 2018, as he methodically moved from floor to floor, firing down hallways and into classrooms

During the prosecution’s three-week case, the defense rarely cross-examined witnesses. 

They asked one teacher from a classroom where no one was shot about the lack of a security monitor in the three-story building where the slayings happened. When the gun store owner who sold Cruz the AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle used in the killings testified, they asked what Florida´s minimum age was in 2017 to buy a rifle – 18 – and today – 21.

Neither they nor the prosecutors then asked the store owner why the law was changed: Cruz was 19 when the shooting happened and the Republican-led Legislature raised the age limit as part of a larger package of gun laws enacted in response to the shootings.

Cruz’s youth will be part of his defense and while Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer has barred the defense from presenting testimony that directly casts blame on third parties like school administrators for not preventing the shooting, his attorneys will likely try to indirectly make such points.

People are brought out of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after the shooting

The defense will be trying to overcome the horrendous evidence that was laid out by lead prosecutor Mike Satz and his team, capped by the jurors´ Aug. 4 visit to the fenced-off building that Cruz stalked, firing about 150 shots down halls and into classrooms. The jurors saw dried blood on floors and walls, bullet holes in doors and windows and remnants of Valentine´s Day balloons, flowers and cards.

Prosecutors also presented graphic surveillance videos of the massacre; gruesome crime scene and autopsy photos from its aftermath; emotional testimony from teachers and students who witnessed others die; and four days of tearful and angry statements from parents, spouses and other family members about the victims and how their loved one´s death affected their lives. Jurors also watched video of Cruz calmly ordering a cherry and blue raspberry Icee minutes after the shooting and, nine months later, attacking a jail guard.

After the defense concludes its case, the prosecution will present a rebuttal case before each side gives its closing argument and jury deliberations begin.

McNeill had deferred her opening statement from the trial’s first day of July 18 to the beginning of her team’s case

Cruz said when he pleaded guilty that he was ‘very sorry’ and asked to be given a chance to help others.

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The start last month of the trial’s penalty phase included testimony from students who were at school that day and cellphone videos in which terrified students cried for help or spoke in hushed whispers as they hid.

U.S. gun violence gained renewed attention following recent mass shootings, including one at a July Fourth holiday parade outside Chicago that killed seven people and another in May at a school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

President Joe Biden in June signed the first major federal gun reform in three decades, which he has celebrated as a rare bipartisan agreement.

The Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

On February 14, 2018, when then-19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, 17 people were killed, including three teachers. Another 17 were injured. 

Alyssa Alhadeff, 14 

Alyssa was a soccer player for Parkland Travel Soccer

Scott Beigel, 35

Biegel was a geography teacher who was killed as he tried to direct students back to his classroom when the shooting broke out

Martin Duque Anguiano, 14

Martin’s brother Miguel wrote on a GoFundMe page for his brother’s funeral expenses: ‘He was a very funny kid, outgoing, and sometimes really quiet’

(L-R) Alyssa Alhadeff, 14; Scott Beigel, 35; Martin Duque Anguiano, 14

Nicholas Dworet, 17 

Nicholas was a senior when he was killed. He had already been recruited onto the swim team at the University of Indianapolis 

Aaron Feis, 37 

Feis was shot and killed after throwing himself in front of students to protect them from bullets. He died from his gunshot wounds after being rushed to the hospital and undergoing emergency surgery 

Jamie Guttenberg, 14

Jamie’s father confirmed her death in a Facebook post that read: ‘My heart is broken. Yesterday, Jennifer Bloom Guttenberg and I lost our baby girl to a violent shooting at her school…I write this trying to figure out how my family gets through this’

(L-R) Nicholas Dworet, 17; Aaron Feis, 37; Jamie Guttenberg, 14

Chris Hixon, 49 

Hixon was the school’s athletic director and his wife told CNN that he was ‘an awesome husband, father and American’. Hixon was a Naval reservist and did a tour in Iraq in 2007

Luke Hoyer, 15 

Luke’s cousin told the local news station that he was ‘an amazing individual. Always happy, always smiling. His smile was contagious, and so was his laugh’

Cara Loughran, 14 

Cara was an Irish dancer at a local dance studio, which posted on Facebook: ‘Cara was a beautiful soul and always had a smile on her face’

(L-R) Chris Hixon, 49; Luke Hoyer, 15; Cara Loughran, 14

Gina Montalto, 14 

Gina was a member of the school’s marching band as a winter guard. Her instructor said she ‘was the sweetest soul ever’ 

Joaquin Oliver, 17

Joaquin was born in Venezuela and moved to the US when he was three. He became a natural citizen one year before the shooting 

Alaina Petty, 14

Alaina was part of the school’s junior ROTC program – a leadership program taught by Army veterans

(L-R) Gina Montalto, 14; Joaquin Oliver, 17; Alaina Petty, 14

Meadow Pollack, 18

Meadow was a senior and had been accepted to Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, at the time of her death 

Helena Ramsay, 17

Helena was planning to attend college in 2019. Her cousin wrote in a tribute: ‘We miss you dearly and are so incredibly sorry that your life was cut short’

Alex Schachter, 14 

Alex was a member of the high school’s marching band and orchestra where he played baritone and trombone. After his death his family set up a GoFundMe page to act as a scholarship fund in his memory

(L-R) Meadow Pollack, 18; Helena Ramsay, 17; Alex Schachter, 14

Carmen Schentrup, 16 

Carmen was a National Merit Scholar semifinalist, which only 10 students had qualified for in 2018  

Peter Wang, 15 

Peter was a member of the school’s junior ROTC program and was reportedly looking forward to the Chinese New Year, which was two days after the massacre 

(L-R) Carmen Schentrup, 16; Peter Wang, 15

 

 

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