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Nikolas Cruz (photo taken October 12): responsible for the deaths of numerous people
Photo: Amy Beth Bennett/AP
More than four years after the Parkland school shooting, a jury in the court case returned life imprisonment without parole for the perpetrator.
In its decision, read in a Fort Lauderdale court, the jury opposed recommending the death penalty for the shooter.
This would have required a unanimous decision.
The final sentence will be formally announced at a later date.
The 24-year-old suspect named Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and attempted murder last October.
The jury had to decide whether he should be sentenced to life in prison or to death for his crime at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
Florida prosecutors had called for his execution.
The process dragged on for several months.
At the October 2021 hearing, Cruz had pleaded guilty.
At the time he said he was very sorry for what he had done.
"Sometimes I can't live with myself."
The then 19-year-old shooter shot dead 14 teenagers and three adults in Parkland on February 14, 2018 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, tightening of the gun law remained largely absent.
School shootings are common in the United States.
In May, a devastating attack on an elementary school in the state of Texas once again shook the country.
At the school in the village of Uvalde, an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers before being shot dead by police.
bbr/dpa/AFP