‘Someone help me!’: Jury shown horrifying Parkland school shooting videos
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Prosecutors on Monday played wrenching videos of Nikolas Cruz’s 2018 rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that captured unimaginable scenes of fear, horror and death.
Only the audio was available to court spectators at Cruz’s sentencing trial in Fort Lauderdale — but the earsplitting screams and relentless gunfire were enough to send several people rushing to flee the gallery.
Former student Danielle Gilbert told jurors that she was in an AP Psychology class when the first volleys of shots erupted and her teacher ordered the class to one side of the room.
Gilbert said she began recording the chaos after she and her classmates hit the ground as bullets strafed the classroom.
“Someone help me!” wailed one victim on the recording as shots rang out, a plaintive plea that sent some in the audience to the exits while others began to sob.
After several minutes, the same voice again calls out — only this time with a weakened voice. “Someone help me,” he said.
The teen is then only able to muster a series of moans.
While she managed to stay composed during the first part of her testimony, Gilbert began crying as the video played.
She told jurors that four classmates were struck by bullets in her class — one fatally.
Several students could be heard on the recording whispering to each other as they hunkered down in fear.
After several minutes, school staffers and police are heard entering the room and commanding kids to leave the area.
“Is anybody injured?” one voice yells out.
“Yes!” several students respond.
“Can you walk?” another man asks. “Where were you shot?”
Realizing that the immediate danger had passed, the silence and whispers suddenly gave way to a burst of sobs and screams.
Cruz buried his head in his hands as the courtroom filled with the sounds of his slaughter.
Another former student, Dylan Kraemer, testified Monday that he and his classmates pushed a filing cabinet against a door in their classroom to block Cruz, who slaughtered 14 students and three staffers with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle during the rampage.
“The shooter started shooting through the window,” Kraemer recalled. “Bullets were flying through. Ducking down. Waiting.”
During a lull in the blasts, Kraemer surveyed his surroundings.
“Two people were dead,” he said. “Multiple people were shot.”
Kraemer testified that he caught a glimpse of Cruz holding a large rifle at one point.
It took 20 minutes for police to get to his classroom, and responding cops commanded the students to run, he said.
Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to murder and attempted murder for the February 14, 2018 massacre, one of the worst school shootings in the country’s history.
Jurors will now decide if he will receive the death penalty or a life sentence.
The trial, expected to last for several months, is scheduled to resume Tuesday morning.
