Jurors in the penalty trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz viewed graphic video Tuesday of him murdering 17 people as he stalked through a three-story classroom building at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School four years ago.

The video, compiled from 13 security cameras inside the building, was not shown to the gallery, where parents of many of the victims sat. Prosecutors say it shows Cruz shooting many of his victims at point-blank range, going back to some as they lay wounded on the floor to kill them with a second volley of shots.

The 12 jurors and 10 alternates stared intently at their video screens. Many held hands to their faces as they viewed the 15-minute recording, which has no sound.

Some started squirming. One juror looked at the screen, looked up at Cruz with his eyes wide and then returned to the video.

Cruz looked down while the video played and did not appear to watch it. He sometimes looked up to exchange whispers with one of his attorneys.

The video was played over the objection of Cruz's attorneys, who argued that any evidentiary value it has is outweighed by the emotions it would raise in the jurors. They argued that witness statements of what happened would be sufficient.

Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer dismissed the objection, saying a video that accurately reflects Cruz's crimes does not unfairly prejudice his case. Prosecutors are using the video to prove several aggravating factors, including that Cruz acted in a cold, calculated and cruel manner.

Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of first-degree murder, and 17 more counts of attempted murder for those he wounded. The jury must decide if he should be sentenced to death or life without parole for the nation's deadliest mass shooting to go before a jury.

Later on day two of the trial, jurors heard testimony from Christopher McKenna, who was a freshman during the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting. He had left his English class to go to the bathroom and exchanged greetings with two students, Luke Hoyer and Martin Duque, as they crossed paths in the first-floor hallway. McKenna then entered a stairwell and encountered Cruz assembling his AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

"He said get out of here. Things are about to get bad," McKenna recalled.

McKenna sprinted out to the parking lot as Cruz went into the hallway and began shooting. McKenna alerted Aaron Feis, an assistant football coach who doubled as a security guard. Feis drove McKenna in his golf cart to an adjacent building for safety, and then went to the three-story building McKenna fled from.

By then, the sounds of gunfire were already ringing out across the campus. Feis went in and was fatally shot immediately by Cruz, who had already killed Hoyer, 15, and Duque, 14, and eight others. Cruz then continued through the second floor, where he fired into classrooms but hit no one. When he reached the third-floor, he killed six more.

The jurors also heard testimony from English teacher Dara Hass, who had three students killed and several wounded in her classroom when Cruz fired through a window in the door.

"The sound was so loud. The students were screaming," said Hass, who wept and dabbed her eyes with tissue as she testified. She thought it might be a drill, but then she spotted the body of 14-year-old Alex Schachter, who had been fatally shot at his desk.

"That's when I saw it wasn't a drill," she said. Two 14-year-old girls also died in the classroom: Alaina Petty and Alyssa Alhadeff.

When police arrived and evacuated her students, Hass said she did not want to leave but officers convinced her.

"I wanted to stay with the students who couldn't go," she said, referring to Schachter, Petty and Alhadeff.

One student in her class, Alexander Dworet, said he originally thought the loud bangs were the school's marching band, but then he felt a "hot sensation" on the back of his head where he had been grazed by a bullet and "I realized I was in danger."

Dworet's 17-year-old brother, Nick, was across the hall in his Holocaust studies class. Cruz fired into that classroom, too, killing him.

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Jury selection

The jurors currently on the main panel are two banking executives and two technology workers, a probation officer, a human resources professional and a Walmart store stock supervisor. Also included are a librarian, a medical claims adjuster, a legal assistant, a customs officer and a retired insurance executive.

The jury selection was filled with setbacks and possible mistrials over the questioning of possible jurors and COVID-19 cases on the defense.

The defense asked to delay the trial because of the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 dead. McNeill’s team argued that the shooting has again raised emotions in Broward County and makes it impossible for Cruz to get a fair trial currently.

Many of the possible jurors were not able to hold seat because of the time commitment for the lengthy process.

Full Recap: Jury sworn in to sentencing trial for Parkland high school shooter

Pleading guilty to all charges

Cruz pleaded guilty in October 2021 to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the deadly shooting.

Legal analysts said Cruz’s plan to plead guilty to all charges in the Parkland shooting — along with the guilty plea in a battery on a jail guard charge — is a calculated move by his attorneys for him to avoid the death penalty.

Video below: Cruz pleads guilty in court

By pleading guilty to killing 17 people and attempting to kill 17 more in 2018, legal experts said Cruz is hoping to convince the jury that he is taking some responsibility for his actions.

"He’s trying to save his life, and the only way to do that is to take responsibility and not put all these poor people through a trial," criminal defense attorney Marc Shiner said.

Death penalty trials in Florida and much of the country often take two years to start because of their complexity, but Cruz's was further delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and extensive legal wrangling.

If Cruz is sentenced to death, that will still not be the end of the process. Death sentences in Florida are given automatic priority review by the Florida Supreme Court.

Trial preparations

Trial preparations were extensive for what was expected to be the biggest murder trial in Broward County history for one of the most infamous crimes in Florida history.

Cruz was arrested about an hour after the attack with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle on Valentine's Day 2018.

Video below: Body camera of arrest of Nikolas Cruz released

His lawyers repeatedly offered to plead guilty in return for a guaranteed sentence of life in prison, but prosecutors refused to drop their pursuit of the death penalty.

Video below: Cruz interrogation video released

Much of the penalty phase is expected to focus on Cruz’s mental condition at the time of the slayings, with prosecutors emphasizing their horrific nature and Cruz’s intensive planning beforehand.

Victims of the Parkland school shooting

Seventeen students and staff were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018. Seventeen others were injured.

Can't see the graphic? Click here.

Settlement with Broward School District

The Broward County School District will pay more than $26 million to the families of the victims.

Board members approved the two legal settlements on in December 2021.

A total of $25 million will be shared by 51 plaintiffs, including families of the 17 dead as well as students and staff who were injured. Another $1.25 million will be paid in one lump sum to Anthony Borges, who suffered some of the most severe injuries.

Video below: Nikolas Cruz outlines shooting plan in video recording

Four years after shooting

For many families, they said there will never be closure for the loss of their loved ones.

Students and families turned into activists.

'I still can't believe this is my reality': Parkland parent creates way to track school violence after son is killed in school shooting

Jim Gard, a math teacher that day, said they were all victims.

"These kids that were in the class, just because they weren't hit doesn't mean they weren’t hit," he said.

And since that day, so many of those victims have refused to just sit back and do nothing. In the days following the shooting, a movement called March For Our Lives was born.

David Hogg was one of the founders.

"When we started doing the march, we thought there would be about 90 people that we could get up to D.C.," Hogg said. "We got near a million."

Video below: Father of Parkland victim hangs banner in view of White House four years after shooting

Four years later, March For Our Lives is still going strong with chapters across the country.

They’ve helped pass state laws designed to keep guns away from violent offenders. They’ve worked to get more federal funding to control gun violence.

'I have to accomplish her dream': Hunter Pollack changes career path after sister is murdered in Parkland massacre

It's become a full-time job nobody wants.

"We want our job to be done so we can go back to being college students or high school students and young people and young professionals," Hogg said.

When they watched the Parkland shooter plead guilty to the murders he committed, both Hogg and Gard are pleased to see this chapter end.

Video below: School safety changes made following Parkland school shooting

They just ask you not to call it closure.

"It's the parents of the kids, the parents who lost their children, I don’t know if there can ever be closure on that," Gard said. "I know for a lot of the people that I talked to, families that I talked to, there is not closure that can come. There’s nothing that will ever bring their kids back, their siblings back, their best friends back."

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, call 211 or the National Suicide Hotline at 988.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz walked casually into a sandwich shop minutes after he murdered 14 students and three staff members at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School four years ago, showing no signs of stress or nervousness, video played at his penalty trial Thursday showed.

Cruz then walked to a nearby McDonald's, where, by coincidence, he unsuccessfully sought a ride from the brother of a girl he had seriously wounded. The boy did not know who Cruz was.

Thursday's abbreviated court session focused on Cruz's attempted escape after the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting and his arrest, about an hour after he fled the campus. The mostly low-key testimony and evidence stood in contrast with the previous three emotional days, which covered the seven minutes Cruz stalked a three-story classroom building firing his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle into crowded classrooms and hallways.

After the shooting, Cruz fled the building, dressed in a burgundy shirt from the Stoneman Douglas Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps — he had been a member when he attended the school — and a New York City Police Department cap.

The former Stoneman Douglas student blended in with students who were evacuating campus and went to a nearby Walmart, where security video shows that 25 minutes after he stopped shooting, he turned into the Subway sandwich shop inside the entrance.

Store manager Carlos Rugeles testified that Cruz ordered a cherry and blue raspberry Icee. The video shows that when Cruz got his drink and change, he tossed the coins into the tip jar, stuck a straw into the lid and walked out.

Eight minutes later, Cruz entered a nearby McDonald's, still drinking his Icee, store video shows. He climbed into a booth with then-Stoneman Douglas freshman John Wilford, who did not know him.

Wilford testified that he didn't know exactly what had happened at the school, but after evacuating, he had been trying to call his older sister Maddy — he didn't know she had been seriously wounded by this stranger. When he couldn't reach her, he called his mom, who said she would pick him up.

He then tried to make small talk with Cruz.

"I told him, 'This is so chaotic, it's crazy with all these helicopters and squad cars. What do you think this could be?'" Wilford recalled. "He didn't say much. He had his head down."

A minute later, Wilford went to meet his mother in the parking lot. Cruz followed and asked for a ride, but Wilford said no.

"He was pretty insistent on it. I wasn't really thinking much of it. I just wanted to get home and my sister wasn't answering her phone," Wilford said.

Cruz walked away. He was arrested about a half-hour later by Michael Leonard, an officer with the neighboring Coconut Creek Police Department. Leonard testified he was driving through neighborhoods looking for anyone matching the shooter's description.

The officer was 3 miles from the school and about to drive back toward it when he spotted Cruz walking on a residential street. He said he stopped and Cruz looked at him. He pulled his gun and ordered Cruz to the ground. Cruz complied.

A search found $350 in Cruz's pocket.

Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of first-degree murder. The jury must only decide if he should be sentenced to death or life without parole for the nation's deadliest mass shooting to go before a jury.

Nine other gunmen who killed at least 17 people died during or immediately after their shootings, either by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 slaying of 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, is awaiting trial.

When jurors eventually get the case, probably in October or November, they will vote 17 times, once for each of the victims, on whether to recommend capital punishment.

For each death sentence, the jury must be unanimous or the sentence for that victim is life. The jurors are told that to vote for death, the prosecution's aggravating circumstances for that victim must, in their judgment, "outweigh" the defense's mitigators. A juror can also vote for life out of mercy for Cruz. During jury selection, the panelists said under oath that they are capable of voting for either sentence.

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Jury selection

The jurors currently on the main panel are two banking executives and two technology workers, a probation officer, a human resources professional and a Walmart store stock supervisor. Also included are a librarian, a medical claims adjuster, a legal assistant, a customs officer and a retired insurance executive.

The jury selection was filled with setbacks and possible mistrials over the questioning of possible jurors and COVID-19 cases on the defense.

The defense asked to delay the trial because of the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 dead. McNeill’s team argued that the shooting has again raised emotions in Broward County and makes it impossible for Cruz to get a fair trial currently.

Many of the possible jurors were not able to hold seat because of the time commitment for the lengthy process.

Full Recap: Jury sworn in to sentencing trial for Parkland high school shooter

Pleading guilty to all charges

Cruz pleaded guilty in October 2021 to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the deadly shooting.

Legal analysts said Cruz’s plan to plead guilty to all charges in the Parkland shooting — along with the guilty plea in a battery on a jail guard charge — is a calculated move by his attorneys for him to avoid the death penalty.

Video below: Cruz pleads guilty in court

By pleading guilty to killing 17 people and attempting to kill 17 more in 2018, legal experts said Cruz is hoping to convince the jury that he is taking some responsibility for his actions.

"He’s trying to save his life, and the only way to do that is to take responsibility and not put all these poor people through a trial," criminal defense attorney Marc Shiner said.

Death penalty trials in Florida and much of the country often take two years to start because of their complexity, but Cruz's was further delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and extensive legal wrangling.

If Cruz is sentenced to death, that will still not be the end of the process. Death sentences in Florida are given automatic priority review by the Florida Supreme Court.

Trial preparations

Trial preparations were extensive for what was expected to be the biggest murder trial in Broward County history for one of the most infamous crimes in Florida history.

Cruz was arrested about an hour after the attack with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle on Valentine's Day 2018.

Video below: Body camera of arrest of Nikolas Cruz released

His lawyers repeatedly offered to plead guilty in return for a guaranteed sentence of life in prison, but prosecutors refused to drop their pursuit of the death penalty.

Video below: Cruz interrogation video released

Much of the penalty phase is expected to focus on Cruz’s mental condition at the time of the slayings, with prosecutors emphasizing their horrific nature and Cruz’s intensive planning beforehand.

Victims of the Parkland school shooting

Seventeen students and staff were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018. Seventeen others were injured.

Can't see the graphic? Click here.

Settlement with Broward School District

The Broward County School District will pay more than $26 million to the families of the victims.

Board members approved the two legal settlements on in December 2021.

A total of $25 million will be shared by 51 plaintiffs, including families of the 17 dead as well as students and staff who were injured. Another $1.25 million will be paid in one lump sum to Anthony Borges, who suffered some of the most severe injuries.

Video below: Nikolas Cruz outlines shooting plan in video recording

Four years after shooting

For many families, they said there will never be closure for the loss of their loved ones.

Students and families turned into activists.

'I still can't believe this is my reality': Parkland parent creates way to track school violence after son is killed in school shooting

Jim Gard, a math teacher that day, said they were all victims.

"These kids that were in the class, just because they weren't hit doesn't mean they weren’t hit," he said.

And since that day, so many of those victims have refused to just sit back and do nothing. In the days following the shooting, a movement called March For Our Lives was born.

David Hogg was one of the founders.

"When we started doing the march, we thought there would be about 90 people that we could get up to D.C.," Hogg said. "We got near a million."

Video below: Father of Parkland victim hangs banner in view of White House four years after shooting

Four years later, March For Our Lives is still going strong with chapters across the country.

They’ve helped pass state laws designed to keep guns away from violent offenders. They’ve worked to get more federal funding to control gun violence.

'I have to accomplish her dream': Hunter Pollack changes career path after sister is murdered in Parkland massacre

It's become a full-time job nobody wants.

"We want our job to be done so we can go back to being college students or high school students and young people and young professionals," Hogg said.

When they watched the Parkland shooter plead guilty to the murders he committed, both Hogg and Gard are pleased to see this chapter end.

Video below: School safety changes made following Parkland school shooting

They just ask you not to call it closure.

"It's the parents of the kids, the parents who lost their children, I don’t know if there can ever be closure on that," Gard said. "I know for a lot of the people that I talked to, families that I talked to, there is not closure that can come. There’s nothing that will ever bring their kids back, their siblings back, their best friends back."

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, call 211 or the National Suicide Hotline at 988.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

At Jefferson County Public Schools, administrators and teachers are preparing for the upcoming school year.

“This is the school response protocol that we use,” said Jeff Pierson, the interim executive director for the Department of School Safety at Jefferson County Public Schools.

Like many school districts, they are preparing to keep kids safe this fall. The recent events in Uvalde added to the burden many safety experts face.

“This year, some of our big points of emphasis are really around logical thinking around your building. What types of things do you need to be knowledgeable around locked doors? What type of doors are accessible to people?” Pierson said.

For security consulting companies, it’s been a busy summer.

“We’ve been pretty busy getting contacted by schools from the elementary school level through high school and even colleges. They’ve contacted us to come in and do security assessments,” Joe Lawless, a security consultant and Senior Security and Transportation Specialist at The Edward David Company, said.

Lawless looks at what technologies and systems schools have in place, the training and drills they practice, and their relationship with local law enforcement.

“The first thing we do is go into these schools and we do a physical security assessment. We look at locks, closed circuit television, buzzers, buzz people in and out, access control,” he explained.

There’s a lot of focus on the basics. But they also look at what’s being discussed industry-wide.

“I think at the national level, you're always going to hear about the latest and greatest,” Pierson said.

“There’s a lot of fad issues that come on and some of those are very good. Some of those items are very useful in the case of a shooting,” Lawless said.

From bulletproof backpacks and whiteboards to new safety systems, new products pop up frequently with the purpose of helping protect schools.

“The inquiries have increased greatly since the last shooting, just based off what our product is and does,” Peter Facchini, the co-founder and CEO of ProtectED Rooms, said.

Protected rooms, which was started a couple years ago, designed a mobile piece of furniture that fits into classrooms. These bookcases are built with bullet resistant panels and a latch system.

“It’s designed to be rolled in front of an opening or a door from inside the room and latched to the wall,” Facchini explained.

Another company, National Safety Shelters, took an existing tornado shelter already in production and turned it into a multipurpose safety pod or room, depending on the size.

“It’s best not to let somebody in the school in the first place, but as we’ve seen throughout the last 20 year or so, even when some schools have those things in place, they don't always prevent the person from getting in,” Dennis Corrado, the president and co-founder of National Safety Shelters, said. “What we’re offering is a safety net should those things fail.”

Lawless said these are great tools, but they should supplement what is already in place.

“You can't lose sight of your training, what the protocols are,” he said.

“It’s about making sure you keep it what we call safety 101. Locking doors, ensuring that the things that you do every single day, muscle memory, drills with kids, those things are very important to us,” Pierson said.

CASTLE ROCK, Colo. (KMGH) — A jury on Tuesday found Devon Erickson guilty of 46 charges, including first-degree murder, in the 2019 STEM School Highlands Ranch shooting in Colorado, which left one student dead and others wounded.

The jury returned the verdicts about 1:30 p.m. after beginning deliberations Tuesday morning.

Erickson now faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. His sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.

Erickson's charges included two sentence enhancers. Along with first-degree murder, the charges included attempted murder, conspiracy, burglary, and arson. Erickson was also charged with two misdemeanors.

Erickson's attorneys had argued that he was pressured into participating in the May 7, 2019 shooting by his fellow teen suspect, Alec McKinney, who last year pleaded guilty and received a sentence of life in prison.

But prosecutors said Erickson and McKinney were partners in a "shared scheme" to carry out the shooting, and McKinney — despite initially telling police that he had pressured Erickson — also testified that he and Erickson were equal partners in the shooting.

The prosecution in its closing argument Monday pointed to evidence that showed Erickson and McKinney had staged a Snapchat video in which McKinney was yelling at Erickson to open a gun safe at his home on the day of the shooting.

McKinney testified that the teens had filmed two prior versions of the video but did not think it would be believable.

Prosecutors also pointed to friendly Instagram messages between the teens and video that showed them giving each other a fist bump — evidence, according to the prosecution, that proved Erickson was going along with the plan to carry out a shooting.

Kendrick Castillo, a senior student at the school, died in the shooting. Castillo and several other students rushed Erickson and took him down, halting the shooting and saving other students' lives, officials have said.

Prosecutors throughout the trial called Castillo and the other students heroes.

This story originally reported by Ryan Osborne on TheDenverChannel.com.