Nikolas Cruz, the suspect arrested on 17 counts of murder in the Parkland school shooting, is being kept in protective custody in jail and has to wear a black suicide prevention vest, one of the attorneys on his defense team told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
State prosecutors will almost certainly seek the death penalty for the 19-year-old suspect after he is formally charged, said Gordon Weekes, one of the chief assistants at the Broward Public Defender’s Office. A decision on whether state prosecutors will seek execution could take weeks or months.
Other attorneys from the office met with Cruz for several hours Thursday in the main jail in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
“What was relayed to me was ‘He is such a child,’” Weekes said. “That’s the impression our attorneys are getting.”
The lead attorney on the case, Melisa McNeill met with Cruz for hours on Thursday and she and others have begun talking to people who know him well, Weekes said.
The defense team doesn’t have Cruz’s medical or school records yet but said he shows clear signs of some degree of autism and has long suffered from mental health problems:”We have a strong belief that his mental illness will be a significant issue in the case and is a significant issue in how we got to this point.”
Cruz was already troubled but was very shocked and traumatized by his mother’s sudden death from pneumonia in November.
“He was trying to get her to go get that illness checked out but it moved very quickly and she passed away quite suddenly. He was just lost after that. He was sad, he was discouraged,” Weekes said.
“He fell between the cracks, there are a lot of issues.”
Weekes said he does not yet know if Cruz was ever involuntarily confined for psychiatric treatment under the Baker Act or if he had ever voluntarily sought mental health treatment: “He was in significant emotional crisis, was dealing with significant trauma and was in considerable despair – all exacerbated by his mom’s death.”
Cruz was adopted on the day of his birth, family members said. His dad died of a heart attack in 2004 and his mom died in early November last year.
When Cruz briefly appeared in court on Thursday afternoon, he wore orange jail scrubs during the public hearing. But in the main jail, he is required to wear a black suicide prevention vest or smock, a garment made from tough nylon that is difficult to tear and too bulky to fashion into a rope.
Guards are monitoring him closely and he is being kept separate from other inmates, for his own safety and because he is considered a possible risk of suicide, the attorney said.
It’s no ordinary crime and the defense team had no ordinary response to the job of representing Cruz.
Weekes, a veteran defense attorney who specializes in representing juvenile defendants, had to pause several times during the interview because he was quietly crying and unable to speak – when he thought about the victims, their parents, the survivors and the grieving community.
“Could you just make sure the community understands, from the defense’s standpoint, we understand the level of mourning that is going on in the community and we join in that mourning,” Weekes said. “But this young man needs
“We are parents. Our kids attend schools in this community as well. We know what those parents are going through. Actually, we can never know exactly what they are going through, but we can appreciate and empathize with their grief,” he said.
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