Four years ago, a 19-year-old boy shot dead 14 teenagers and three adults at a Florida school with a legally purchased semi-automatic rifle. The public prosecutor wants the death penalty. However, the jury decides against it.
More than four years after the massacre at a school in the US city of Parkland, the perpetrator has been sentenced to life imprisonment. The judge at the competent court in the state of Florida officially announced the sentence. The jury in the trial had recommended life imprisonment for the assassin in mid-October – and not the death penalty, as demanded by prosecutors and the victims’ relatives. The judge was bound by the jury’s decision.
On February 14, 2018, the then 19-year-old shooter shot 14 teenagers and three adults at the school in Parkland with a legally purchased semi-automatic rifle and injured other people. After the crime, surviving students had started protests against gun violence and for stricter gun laws in the USA, which became a nationwide movement. However, guns remain readily available in the United States and school shootings are common.
Before the sentencing, relatives of the dead had been given the opportunity to approach the perpetrator themselves in the courtroom. In the emotional performances, they spoke about their grief, but also expressed anger, disappointment and incomprehension that the perpetrator was not sentenced to death.