Miami, February 13 The Governor of Florida (United States), Ron DeSantis, ordered on Monday that the national flag and the state flag fly at half mast in institutions and public buildings until sunset Tuesday, date of the fifth anniversary of the shooting that left 17 dead in a Parkland. high school.
In the order, DeSantis also asks all Florida residents to observe a minute of silence at 10:17 a.m. local time (1517 GMT) tomorrow in honor of the 17 people (14 students and 3 teachers) who died on February 14, 2018 in the shooting perpetrated by Nikolas Cruz at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school.
“In memory of the lives lost in this tragedy, I hereby direct that the American and Florida flags be flown at half-mast on all state and local buildings, facilities, and grounds,” the executive order reads.
On November 2, Cruz, now 24 and a former student of the aforementioned school, was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, despite the prosecution’s request for the maximum sentence.
However, three of the twelve jurors voted against Cruz’s execution on the grounds that he suffered from mental problems, so the young man was spared, a verdict that sparked outrage from a large majority of the victims’ relatives.
One of Tuesday’s memorial acts was organized by the Parkland 17 Memorial Foundation, an entity dedicated to those who died in the aforementioned school shooting.
The vice president of this entity, Tony Montalto, who lost his 14-year-old daughter, Gina, to shots fired by Cruz with a semi-automatic rifle inside the school, said today Today to EFE that “devastated” is the word that describes what he feels, five years after the massacre.
Montalto said he was “disappointed” by Cruz’s life sentence: “It would have been fair to apply the maximum sentence established by Florida law, which includes capital punishment”, underlined the father of the murdered student .
After Cruz’s trial, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis raised the need for legal change so that Florida judges could impose the death penalty without needing a unanimous jury verdict.
For the Republican Governor of Florida, the “students, teachers and professors (of Parkland College) have shown great courage in the face of danger. The sacrifices of these heroes, as well as the courageous actions of the first responders, will never be forgotten “. .” EFE
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