Nikolas Cross, the young man who confessed to the Police to be the author of the massacre perpetrated in an institute of Parkland (Florida) On February 14, 2018, he will plead guilty next week to the charges against him for the deaths of 17 people, his lawyers said on Friday.
The judge Elizabeth Scherer, from county circuit courts Broward (South of Florida), set a hearing for that purpose for next Wednesday after cross, 23, today pleaded guilty to an assault on a guard that occurred in November 2018 in prison.
Cruz was present with his lawyers at the hearing on Friday, which was surrounded by great expectation since it had previously been leaked to the media that the young man was going to plead guilty to 17 murders and 17 assassination attempts for the massacre that occurred in the School Marjorie Stoneman Douglas (MSJ).
The leak led the Prosecutor’s Office to say that it had not reached an agreement with the defense in relation to the charges it faces for those events and that its guilty plea will not prevent a jury from ruling and it could be sentenced to capital punishment. .
The young man, who was a student at the MSJ institute but was expelled for misconduct and had an arsenal of weapons in his home, was arrested on the same day as the massacre, in which 17 people died, 14 of them students, and confessed to the Police have been the author.
Since then, he has been imprisoned in a Broward jail awaiting a trial that has been delayed several times for various reasons including the covid-19 pandemic.
His defense, which is handled by public defenders, has raised several times with the Prosecutor’s office an agreement for them to ask Cruz for life in prison in exchange for pleading guilty, but the accusers always answered no.
The Venezuelan Patricia Oliver, mother of Joaquin Oliver, one of the students who lost their lives in the massacre, told Efe on Friday that he prefers life imprisonment, due to personal convictions and because he believes that it implies “greater suffering” for the convicted person.
