Parkland victims are remembered at the Temple of Time 2:42
(CNN Spanish) --
On February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz, who was 19 at the time, shot inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people, including students and teachers.
Cruz was a former student of that Florida high school, and had been expelled for unspecified disciplinary reasons.
Cruz pleaded guilty in court to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.
After a Florida jury recommended in October that Cruz, now 24, be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the deadly shooting, a judge officially handed down his sentence Thursday.
The most important data of the attack
Shortly before 3 pm on February 14, 2018, police respond to reports of a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, a public high school with about 3,000 students, outside Boca Raton.
Upon arrival, the agents found a dramatic scene.
The shooting had already happened.
Nikolas Cruz, who was 19 years old at the time, entered the school and began shooting.
Law enforcement sources said the suspect used a .223-caliber AR-15-style firearm in the shooting.
In a span of about 10 minutes, Cruz roamed the hallways and targeted those huddled in classrooms on the first and second floors before leaving campus undetected in a crowd of students.
Jury visited the scene of the Parkland school shooting 2:45
The shooting left 17 people dead, including teachers and students.
12 people died inside the building and two outside it, police said at the time.
Another of the victims died in the street while the other two died in hospital.
Investigators believe the suspect pulled the fire alarm to get people out of classrooms and increase the death toll, a law enforcement source told CNN at the time.
Some students, fearing their lives would soon end, sent farewell text messages to their loved ones;
others used their phones to share startling images of the attack on social media.
On March 7, 2018, a Florida grand jury indicted Nikolas Cruz on 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the school shooting.
The Parkland massacre is among the 10 deadliest mass shootings in US history.
Who is Nikolas Cruz?
Nikolas Cruz was 19 years old when he gunned down high school students and teachers in Parkland, Florida.
Cruz was a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, from which he had been expelled for unspecified disciplinary reasons.
At the time of the attack, Cruz was living at the home of Kimberly and James Snead, who had given her lodging after her mother's death.
After the massacre, they assured that they never saw the violent side of the young man, so they never imagined that he was capable of committing a massacre.
James Snead knew he had weapons, but he had ordered them to be locked up and he thought the young man had given him the only key, so he couldn't use them without his permission.
Cruz pleaded guilty in a Florida court to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.
The declaration begins to conclude a legal chapter of a massacre that scarred a community and spawned a massive national protest movement against gun violence in American schools.
parkland massacre
