Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz watched his adoptive father die when he was just five years old, running and telling his mother “daddy’s dead”, according to harrowing courtroom testimony.
Video testimony from Finai Browd, who was friends with Cruz’s late adoptive mother Lynda Cruz, was played in court on Monday as the defence continues to try to convince jurors to sentence him to life in prison instead of death.
Ms Browd described the shocking moment that Cruz witnessed his father Roger’s sudden death from a heart attack in August 2004.
She told the court that Lynda said Roger was in the family’s den with Nikolas and his younger brother Zachary while she was in the kitchen making lunch.
Suddenly, Nikolas – who was almost six at the time – ran past her crying.
When she asked her son if he was upset because his father had yelled at him, Cruz allegedly gave a harrowing response.
“As clear as sunshine he said, ‘No, Daddy is dead,’” said Ms Browd.
At that moment, she said Lynda told her she ran into the den and found her husband dead on the couch. He had suffered a heart attack.
Ms Browd testified that Nikolas and Zachary were sent to a grief support group with other children after witnessing the traumatic incident. Jurors previously heard in courtroom testimony that Cruz was not given grief counseling until four years after Roger’s death.
Ms Browd told the court that the Valentine’s Day after Roger’s death, Cruz – then six – and Zachary came to her and said they wanted to buy their mother Valentine’s Day flowers
“Daddy’s not going to bring Mommy flowers but we want to,” she recalled them telling her. “So we took them to buy [them].”
Exactly 13 years later on Valentine’s Day 2018, Cruz murdered 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Ms Browd said she became best friends with Lynda when they both lived in New York in the 1980s before they moved together with their husbands to Florida.
Lynda was desperate for children but suffered four miscarriages, she said.
Then, in 1998, the Cruzs adopted Nikolas as a baby, followed by Cruz’s biological brother Zachary Cruz.
Nikolas Cruz stands as jurors enter the courtroom on 29 August
(AP)
Ms Browd testified that Lynda hid the fact that Nikolas was adopted from both Lynda and Roger’s family.
When the boys were young, she also told them how much they looked like their adopted parents despite not being biologically related.
“She would tell Nikolas that he looked just like her from a young age,” she said.
Lynda also told Zachary that he looked just like Roger, she said.
Ms Browd also adopted a son and daughter and both of their families were very close, with their children spending a lot of time together, she said.
But, at some point, she said Cruz was accused of “inappropriately touching” a young girl.
There was “an incident with Nikolas… inappropriate touching”, she said.
Ms Browd, who said she hasn’t seen Cruz in 2010 after she had a falling out with Lynda, testified that Cruz was “aggressive” from a young age and had “tantrums” unlike those of a typical child.
“He would throw things. He would lay down and scream and cry, but not like a normal kid,” she said.
“Children would find it difficult to play with [Cruz] because he was aggressive,” she added.
Ms Browd said that Cruz’s younger brother Zachary had a lot of friends but they “didn’t want to be around” his older brother because of his aggressive tendencies.
Cruz also had trouble eating and communicating and wore diapers until he was five years old, she testified.
When Cruz threw tantrums, his mother gave him “whatever he wanted”.
“It had to be his way or no way,” she said.
Cruz was “so attached” to his mother that she couldn’t go anywhere without him when he was young.
Finai Browd appears on in courtroom testimony on Monday
(AP)
“He would stand at the window screaming and crying and I would have to yell at him to get away from the window,” said Ms Browd.
“It took a long time to calm him down. He would stand there for a few hours and do this.”
After Roger’s death, Lynda was to raise the two boys alone.
Then, on November 2017 – just three months before Cruz murdered 17 people in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – Lynda died, leaving Cruz and Zachary parentless.
On 14 February 2018, Cruz, a then-19-year-old former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, travelled to the school in Parkland, Florida, armed with an AR-15.
There, he stalked the corridors of the freshman building, murdering 17 students and staff members.
Last October, Cruz pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder over the Valentine’s Day massacre.
Jurors will now decide whether to sentence him to life in prison without parole or to death.
Prosecutors spent three weeks detailing how Cruz murdered 17 students and staff members and wounded 17 more, with jurors hearing from grieving family members and touring the school site.
Now, Cruz’s defence is presenting its case, seeking to show that Cruz’s actions that day were the culmination of his life up to that point – from him being exposed to drugs and alcohol in the womb through his birth mother, to behavioural and psychological issues from an early age, and the deaths of both of his adopted parents.
