Nikolas Cruz put a MAGA hat in his mother’s grave and LAUGHED about it knowing she 'wouldn't like it'
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA: The 23-year-old Parkland gunman Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people in a 2018 high school mass shooting, apparently laughed about leaving a MAGA hat on the grave of his mother, Lynda Cruz. Ahead of his death penalty trial, Nikolas spoke about how he misses his “step mother and laughs at the fact that he left his Donald Trump ‘MAGA’ hat on her grave” in a video visit with Richard Moore, his brother Zachary Cruz’s roommate, on March 8. He also told Moore the trial is "going to take an emotional toll" on him.
The revelation came on the same day Nikolas' former neighbor Paul Gold testified that Lynda, who died from pneumonia in November 2017, was terrified of her adopted son because of his temper, according to a summary of a jailhouse conversation via DailyMail, released before the sentencing trial in Ft Lauderdale. He said, "She told me she was scared of him. She told me not to believe the nice appearance he had and angelic ways and that he would turn and do bad things. And she was a little afraid of him at some times,” as quoted by Independent. Pictures of the damage Nikolas did to the home due to his violent nature were also shared with jurors.
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The summary states, as per the DailyMail report, Nikolas asked his former neighbor Patricia Westerlind in a separate video call on April 13 to go to Lynda’s grave and remove the hat "since he knew his mother would [not] like it [in] there”.
'Mother hated Donald Trump'
As his friend Hunter McCutcheon narrated to a detective, "Due to the fact that his mother hated Donald Trump, he put it in her casket with her when she died and took a picture of her with the hat." The jurors were shown a series of shirtless pictures of Nikolas wearing a MAGA hat with a handgun.
Nikolas Cruz's ongoing trial
As previously reported, on August, 29, the court heard how Cruz was a "violent and troubled" toddler, who had "separation anxiety" from his adoptive mother. He also found his stepfather, Roger Cruz, dead on the sofa at age five after he suffered from a heart attack and soon after started exhibiting "violent and troubled" behavior. Finai Browd, a friend of Lynda, told the court that his stepfather had suffered from a heart attack and that Nikolas did not get grief counseling until four years after the 2004 death.