Watch: Parkland mom rains hell on jury after Stoneman Douglas High School shooter avoids death penalty
Linda Beigel-Schulman with a portrait of her son Scott (MSNBC screenshot)
October 14, 2022
During an appearance on MSNBC on Friday morning, the mother of a hero teacher who was shot and killed by Nikolas Cruz in the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018, went on a tirade at the jury which refused to recommend the death penalty after a three-month trial.
Linda Beigle-Schulman's son Scott was a geography teacher and cross-country coach at the school who lost his life after unlocking a door and hiding students whose names would likely would have been added to the 17 who were murdered and 17 who were injured in the shooting.
As Stoneman Douglas student Kelsey Friend told ABC, "He unlocked the door and let us in. I had thought he was behind me, but he wasn’t. When he opened the door, he had to re-lock it so we could stay safe, but he didn’t get the chance to," adding, "He was in the doorway and the door was still open and the shooter probably didn’t know we were in there because he was lying on the floor. If the shooter had come in the room, I probably wouldn’t be [alive].”
On Thursday the jury deliberated for close to nine hours before recommending life in prison because the death penalty required a unanimous agreement, with the jury foreman saying there were three hold-outs.
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That infuriated a wide range of family members who lost a loved one four years ago, and Beigle-Schulman made a strong case for the death penalty by describing her son's wounds and then adding she is considering releasing his autopsy photos to show the public what high-powered weapons in the hands of anyone can do to a body.
"The truth of the matter is, okay, really, the verdict at this point gives credibility to the NRA's talking point that the problem is mental illness and not guns," she told host Yasmin Vossoughian before adding, "Are you serious?"
"If anything came out of this, a good portion of the victims' families ---," she continued before pausing. "I'll speak for myself, yesterday's verdict did one thing to me that will never stop me: I will go forward, I will be rededicating my life to work even harder than I'm doing right now to end the epidemic of gun violence in our country."
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"I will do everything I can, I will show photos of my son if I have to of his autopsy of what it is to show people what that assault weapon, what that AR-15 does to people," she exclaimed. "Instead of the media saying this might be disturbing, you might want to look away -- no, don't look away. Look at what it does to people. Look at how it goes into someone's head and goes off like a cherry bomb, quote/unquote, from one of those medical examiners and the only thing left in this poor victim's head was his scalp holding his head together."
"It's time for people to see what's going on. We cannot let this go anymore!" she insisted. "This person who took away 17 lives and was given back his life from the jury. That's wrong, that's really wrong."
Watch video below or at this link.