WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden speaks about the “scourge” of gun violence, his go-to answer is to zero in on so-called assault weapons.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The superintendent of Florida's second-largest school district was fired after a late-night motion from a board member appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis following a grand jury report into the Parkland school massacre.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz formally received a sentence of life without parole Wednesday after families of his 17 slain victims spent two days berating him as evil, a coward, a monster and a subhuman who deserves a painful death.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Families of the 17 children and staff members Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz murdered cursed him to hell, wished him a painful death and called him a coward Tuesday as they got their one chance to address him directly before he is sentenced to life in prison.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz will be sentenced to life in prison this week — but not before the families of the 17 people he murdered get the chance to tell him what they think.
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Just hours after voting started in Texas, Kimberly Rubio cast her ballot in the same Uvalde city building where she waited in May to learn that her daughter, Lexi, was one of 19 fourth-graders fatally shot at Robb Elementary School.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A defiant Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis refused to commit to serving a full four-year term if reelected when pressed by his Democratic rival, Charlie Crist, at their only gubernatorial debate on Monday.
MIAMI (AP) — Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Demings of Florida went on the attack Tuesday in her first debate against Republican Sen.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — It wasn't long ago that Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz would have been looking at a near-certain death sentence for murdering 17 people in Parkland, even if his jury could not unanimously agree on his fate.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Prosecutors of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz called for an investigation Friday after a juror said another panelist threatened her during the deliberations that ended with a life sentence for Cruz's murder of 17 people four years ago at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A divided jury spared Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz the death penalty Thursday for killing 17 people at a Parkland high school in 2018, sending him to prison for the rest of his life in a decision that left many families of the victims angered, baffled and in tears.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The jurors who will decide whether Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz is sentenced to death or life without parole concluded their first day of deliberations Wednesday as the three-month trial nears its conclusion.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The prosecutor and defense attorney for Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz agreed Tuesday that his 2018 attack that killed 17 people was horrible, but disagreed in their closing arguments on whether it was an act of evil worthy of execution or one of a broken person who should be imprisoned for life.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — It's possible Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz talked himself into a death sentence.
Prosecutors played video last week at Cruz's penalty trial of jailhouse interviews he did this year with two of their mental health experts.
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — The head of a Virginia company accused of exploiting immigration detainees seeking bail has now been charged with defrauding the brother of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz calmly told a psychologist why he picked Valentine’s Day to massacre 17 people at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School four years ago: Because no one loved him, he wanted to ruin the holiday forever for anyone associated with the school.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Prosecutors spent several hours Tuesday trying to prove Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz purposely did poorly on tests administered to see if he suffers from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, the primary reason his attorneys say he murdered 17 people four years ago.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz told a prosecution psychiatrist he began contemplating a mass murder during middle school, doing extensive research on earlier killers to learn their methods and mistakes to shape his own plans, video played at his penalty trial showed Monday.
EDINBURG, Texas (AP) — Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday night that Texas would send busloads of migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to more cities and Democrat challenger Beto O’Rourke pledged tighter gun laws as parents whose children were killed in the Uvalde school shooting stood outside an auditorium hosting the only debate before November's election.
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — A former tenant charged with setting a fire at a Massachusetts apartment building that claimed the lives of four people pleaded not guilty at her arraignment Friday and was held without bail.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Prosecutors in the penalty trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz began their rebuttal of the defense case Tuesday by questioning whether his birth mother drank as heavily during pregnancy as some witnesses portrayed.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Prosecutors in the penalty trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz will begin their rebuttal case Tuesday, challenging his attorneys' contention that he murdered 17 people because his birth mother abused alcohol during pregnancy, a condition they say went untreated.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The judge overseeing the penalty trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz refused to step down Monday, rejecting a motion by his attorneys who accused her of being biased against their client and prejudicing the jurors who will decide if he should die for murdering 17 people four years ago.
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — One girl runs and hides when she sees thin people with long hair similar to the gunman who stormed into her Uvalde school and killed 21 people. One boy stopped making friends and playing with animals.
When 14-year-old Michael Carneal opened fire on his fellow students during a before-school prayer meeting in 1997, school shootings were not yet a part of the national consciousness. The carnage that left three students dead and five more injured at Heath High School, near Paducah, Kentucky, ended when Carneal put down his weapon and the principal walked him to the school office — a scene that seems unimaginable today.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Attorneys for Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz asked for the judge in his murder case to remove herself on Friday, two days after she scolded them when they abruptly rested their case after calling only a fraction of their expected witnesses.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A major Florida sheriff who was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis after a high school massacre appears to have lied when he didn't disclose in his job application that he fatally shot another teenager when he was 14 and that he had used LSD, the state ethics commission found Wednesday.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Attorneys for Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz suddenly and surprisingly rested their case Wednesday after calling only a fraction of their expected witnesses, leading to a shouting match after the judge accused them of a lack of professionalism.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — One of the nation’s leading fetal alcohol researchers testified Tuesday that Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz’s birth mother drank more during her pregnancy than any woman he’s ever seen documented.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Attorneys for Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz began building their argument Monday that his birth mother's alcohol abuse left him with severe behavioral problems that eventually led to his 2018 murder of 17 people at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Chaos reigned in the home where Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz grew up, testimony in his ongoing penalty trial has shown.
Chicago is one of the nation's gun violence hotspots and a seemingly ideal place to employ Illinois' "red flag” law that allows police to step in and take firearms away from people who threaten to kill.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — In a failed attempt to bar the admission into evidence several swastikas Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz drew on assignments, his attorneys made an unusual argument Thursday at his penalty trial: he was an equal opportunity killer who shot his victims without regard to race or religion.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — When one of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz ’s dogs died after eating a poisonous toad, he began a rampage against the amphibians, a former neighbor testified Wednesday, adding that Cruz’s temper was so volatile he never should have been allowed to own a gun or other weapons.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — During his middle school years, Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz frequently cursed at teachers and made threats, and his drawings of gunshot victims were so disturbing that one teacher kept them for years, turning them over to authorities immediately after he massacred 17 people, evidence presented Tuesday at his penalty trial showed.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Four school board members appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in one of Florida’s most Democratic counties were sworn into office on Tuesday. They replace the elected Broward County board members DeSantis suspended after a grand jury investigating the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School found widespread wrongdoing.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz's attorneys presented more testimony Monday that the mass killer exhibited violent, disruptive and troubled behavior from his earliest years and, just before his sixth birthday, witnessed his adoptive father's sudden death.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Four years before Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 people at a Florida high school, therapists at another school wrote a letter to his psychiatrist saying he was fixated on guns and dreamed of killing others and being covered in blood, testimony at his penalty trial showed Thursday.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A psychologist who treated Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz when he was 8 years old testified Wednesday that Cruz was a “peculiar child” who had many behavioral and developmental issues but his widowed mother seemed overwhelmed and wasn’t consistent in her discipline or in getting him treatment.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz as a toddler was intellectually and physically behind other children, which caused him to isolate himself and hit and bite to get what he wanted, a daycare administrator and former neighbor testified Tuesday at his penalty trial for mass murder.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The birth mother of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz abused crack cocaine and alcohol during her pregnancy, his half-sister and another witness testified Monday -- a circumstance that his lead attorney said left him with “an irretrievably broken” brain and set him on the road to mass murder.
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Melissa Lee comforted her son and daughter after a student opened fire in their suburban Kansas City high school, wounding an administrator and a police officer stationed there.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The prosecution spent three weeks telling jurors how Nikolas Cruz murdered 14 students and three staff members at a Florida high school four years ago.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida grand jury empaneled after a 2018 school massacre has recommended that Gov. Ron DeSantis remove from office four members of the Broward County school board, saying they and district administrators displayed “deceit, malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty and incompetence” in their handling of a campus safety program.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A defense mental health expert in the penalty trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz can pinpoint when he realized the 23-year-old mass murderer still has “irrational thoughts” — the two were making small talk when Cruz began describing plans for an eventual life outside prison.