Parkland School Shooter Gets Life In Prison: 'You Deserve To Rot Away'

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL — Nikolas Cruz, the gunman who killed 17 people and wounded 17 others when he opened fire four years ago on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, will spend the rest of his life in prison after a Florida judge formally sentenced him this week.

Cruz, who pleaded guilty last year to the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting rampage that killed 14 students and three staff members and injured 17 others, will serve life sentences on all 34 counts.

He will not be eligible for parole, Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer said Wednesday.

"I am ordering that each and every count run consecutive," Sherer said. "That is one after another."

Cruz's defense team has 30 days to appeal the sentence.

Ahead of the sentencing, Cruz listened for a second day as more families and loved ones of the victims directly addressed him for the first time since the shooting. Cruz, shackled and wearing a red jail jumpsuit, stared at the speakers but showed little emotion, as he did the day before.

“It was extremely painful to hear all the horrific details of this massacre at our children’s high school," Annika Dworet, who with her husband, Mitch, attended every day of Cruz's trial. “Just to be in the same room as this monster who killed our son Nicholas and attempted to murder our son Alex. It’s unbearable."

She continued, “One of the most disgusting and unprofessional actions that occurred in this courtroom was the defense team holding, touching and giggling with this cold-blooded murderer."

The Parkland school shooting was the deadliest mass shooting that ever went to trial in the United States. Nine other people in the United States who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or immediately after their attacks by suicide or police gunfire.

On Oct. 13, a jury recommended that Cruz, 24, serve life in prison without parole rather than be sentenced to death, which left many family members stunned.

Scherer could not impose the death penalty on her own.

Many of the families and loved ones of the victims criticized a Florida law that requires jury unanimity for a death sentence to be imposed — Cruz's jurors voted 9-3 in favor of his execution.

"You deserve the opportunity to rot away," David Alhadeff, the uncle of Alyssa Alhadeff, told Cruz via Zoom from his classroom in Maryland. "You deserve the opportunity to absorb the look of terror on your face once you leave this courtroom. You deserve the opportunity of knowing that justice will prevail at some point, causing you great anguish, minute by minute, day by day."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.