The problematic half-sister of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz told in court on Monday that their prostitution-industry mother used crack and drank excessively while she was carrying him, causing him to grow up in a “polluted womb.”
The 35-year-old Danielle Woodard, who is presently in custody on suspicion of carjacking, told the jury that their mother “placed drugs above everything else” and described their mother’s parenting as “terrible.”
In reference to her late mother Brenda Woodard, she remarked, “She brought me to a life that no child should ever be introduced to.”
To emphasise their claim that Cruz’s difficult upbringing justifies a lighter sentence, Cruz’s defence counsel invited his sister to the witness stand.
In lieu of the death penalty, the attorneys urge the jury to sentence Cruz to life in prison for the 2018 shooting deaths of 14 students and three staff members at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Cruz’s attorneys claim that his mom’s usage of alcohol and crack during his pregnancy probably harmed his brain’s ability to develop normally.
Half-sister of the murderer, who was 11 when Cruz was born, told the jury that she begged their mother in 1998, while holding Cruz as a newborn, if they could retain him.
Prosecutors pointed out on Monday, however, that Cruz’s was adopted into a thriving and largely functional home.
They said that Lynda and Roger Cruz took him in and gave him a good childhood by enrolling him in summer camps, taking him to therapy sessions, and other activities.
Cruz, according to the prosecution, had aggressive tendencies and bizarre fantasies from a young age in spite of these efforts.
These included taking on animal personalities, such as that of lions and tigers.
Lynda Cruz went away just months before the massacre, and Cruz’s adoptive father lost away from a heart attack when he was five.
Cruz, 23, is currently awaiting sentencing after entering a guilty plea to one of the greatest mass shootings in American history.
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