He Almost Died Cops Brought Him Back Hes at It Again

He kept his head down as he walked into the judicial circuitous, knowing his presence would attract stares. He emptied his pockets at security and hustled onto the lift. He tugged at his necktie, the one he'd borrowed because he forgot his suit. He hated suits. He hated all of this. But for his brother, he had come back over again and again.

Out the elevator, down the hall, by the news reporters and upwards to the doors guarded by sheriff's deputies. They stepped bated and he stepped into the courtroom.

There in a blood-red jumpsuit was his blood brother, Nikolas Cruz, who had confessed to carrying out a massacre at his former high school.

Nikolas Cruz, 20, enters a courtroom at the Broward County Courthouse for a status hearing on Jan. eight, well-nigh a year after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School left 17 dead. (Amy Beth Bennett/S Florida Sun-Watch/Pool/Associated Printing)

Xiv students and three staff members were killed that Valentine'due south Twenty-four hours at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland. Seventeen others were injured, left with lasting scars, physical and mental. Hundreds more had their lives upended: parents suddenly without children, students rallying for gun control by day and dealing with panic attacks at night, first responders denounced for the choices they made among the anarchy.

Listen on Post Reports: "I'm stuck between loving him and hating him"

Some of those people were here in the courtroom, and sliding into a demote beside them at present was another person whose life was derailed that day. Zachary Cruz was 17 when his older blood brother became i of the deadliest school shooters in American history.

In the months since, Zach had been ostracized by his customs, involuntarily confined to a psychiatric facility, arrested twice, kicked out of his guardian's home, taken in past strangers who moved him 900 miles northward to Virginia, and blamed, not then much by others but by himself.

After his brother confessed to the Parkland shooting, Zachary Cruz, now 18, moved to Virginia. "I'k stuck between loving him and hating him because of what he did," Zach says. (Julia Rendleman/For The Washington Post)

He craned his cervix to get a ameliorate view of his brother. For this January hearing, Nik was wearing new glasses. Zach noticed his hair had been buzzed brusk again.

Zach kept trying to make center contact. But Nik's head was turned to the side, facing abroad from him.

"We would like to take a trial engagement to work towards," a prosecutor was telling the judge. The state of Florida, renowned for imposing expiry sentences, was seeking one for 20-year-old Nik. "We're coming up on the ceremony of this incident."

Zach looked dorsum downward at his skateboarding shoes. He and Nik never knew their biological parents, and their adoptive parents were dead. Zach alone had joined the growing commonage of people whose siblings or children became mass shooters. Simply unlike for the relatives of the Columbine, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shooters, his brother, for now, was nonetheless live.

That left Zach with a selection. To support Nik was to forever tie himself to the heinous criminal offense his brother admitted to committing. To altitude himself was to abandon the simply real family he has left.

"I always behave information technology with me. Every twenty-four hours. At that place is no forgetting," Zach says. "I'm stuck between loving him and hating him considering of what he did."

The prosecutor kept talking. The gauge nodded along. And every few minutes, Zach looked up once more, hoping his brother would acknowledge that he was yet here.

Zach spent the afternoon of Feb. 14, 2018, in the identify he could well-nigh e'er be found. He knew the curve of the skate park'due south dips and lifts, the sound his board made as it grinded against metal, the sting of a wipeout that meant he'd nigh landed his trick.

Skating had been Zach's escape since the day his mom, Lynda Cruz, relented at a garage sale and bought him his first board. He brought it home to the 5-bedroom house in Parkland where the boys were being raised and spray-painted it gold.

Lynda and Roger Cruz had adopted Nik starting time, when he was an infant. Seventeen months later, when they learned Nik'due south biological mom had given nascence over again, they took in Zachary, as well.

The brothers looked almost aught alike. Nik was always pale, with light chocolate-brown optics and straight hair. Zach'due south caramel pare and thick curls made him presume his father was black. Lynda would never say.

She did not tell the boys they were adopted until they were in center school, long afterward Roger suffered a fatal centre attack in 2004. Zach was just 4 when he died, leaving their family without his income and steadying presence. Zach's only retentivity of his dad was the style Roger would lift him up, set his little feet on top of his own and dance around the room.

A childhood photo of Zach, left, and his brother, whom he calls Nik.

Zach Cruz holds a photo of himself, at right, with his adoptive parents Lynda and Roger Cruz and blood brother Nik. Roger died of a heart assail in 2004, and Lynda died of pneumonia in 2017.

A childhood photo of Zach, left, and his blood brother, whom he calls Nik. Zach Cruz holds a photo of himself, at correct, with his adoptive parents Lynda and Roger Cruz and brother Nik. Roger died of a heart attack in 2004, and Lynda died of pneumonia in 2017. (Photos past Julia Rendleman/For The Washington Post)

Theirs was a childhood filled with those pocket-size acts of love. When the boys were toddlers, Lynda took photos of them in the bathtub, Nik's artillery wrapped effectually Zach.

When they grew bigger, they would beg Lynda to take them to Liberty Park, where at that place was an elaborate wooden jungle gym and a fence engraved with the names of community members who donated to the park. The boys would run over and find their names, written side past side.

They learned responsibility by caring for their dogs, a cuddly retriever mix named Maisey and an energetic terrier named Kobe.

Then came the days of walking to the motorcoach stop together, of long rounds of Halo on the Xbox, of moaning in unison when Lynda would yank its plug from the wall, saying they were wasting ability.

They didn't know just how sick she was when, in the fall of 2017, she visited a CVS dispensary thinking she had the flu. The clinic called an ambulance and sent her to the hospital, where she died of pneumonia. Zach says he was the one who had to tell Nik she was gone.

The boys went to stay with their mom's friend, Rocxanne Deschamps, who lived 40 minutes away, closer to the beach. Nik left inside weeks to motility in with one of his friends. Zach stayed, registering for an online school to continue his inferior year. But most days he took off on his skateboard instead.

Then, on that February afternoon, Deschamps showed upwards at the skate park, hurtled out of her car and ran toward him.

People awaiting word from students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., get together south of the campus on the day of the shooting last February. (Amy Beth Bennett/S Florida Lord's day-Sentinel/AP)

Kareen Vargas, 27, prays exterior Stoneman Douglas. (Matt McClain/The Washington Postal service)

Steve Zipper visits a makeshift memorial in Parkland. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

LEFT: People awaiting give-and-take from students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Loftier School in Parkland, Fla., gather south of the campus on the day of the shooting concluding February. (John McCall/Due south Florida Sun-Sentinel/Associated Printing) MIDDLE: Kareen Vargas, 27, prays outside Stoneman Douglas. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) Correct: Steve Attachment visits a makeshift memorial in Parkland. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

"She was freaking out," Zach remembers. "She kept saying, 'Practise yous know what happened? Practice you lot know what happened?'"

She thrust her phone into his hands. On the screen was a news article with a photo of Nik and a headline that said the words "school shooting."

"At showtime, I thought information technology was a prank," Zach said. But in that location were dozens more stories, all naming his brother every bit the suspected gunman.

Zach'south trunk carried him into the car, back to Deschamps's trailer and downward to the police station, while his listen was bombarded with the memories that told the whole story of his childhood:

When the brothers made it to the bus stop, Nik would slink beyond the street, non wanting to stand with the other kids. Zach didn't bring together him.

Their games of Halo sometimes ended with Nik screaming uncontrollably, punching doors and stabbing seat cushions until their mom called the police force.

She would call the law on Zach, also, when he stayed out late without permission. He'd come domicile to encounter Nik walking effectually the house with his shotgun, pretending to shoot invisible people while he blared "Pumped Up Kicks," a song about a male child's fantasy of becoming a school shooter.

Once Zach snooped in Nik's phone and institute messages that seemed to show his brother talking to himself. "I'yard gonna become to that schoolhouse," Nik wrote. "I'grand gonna shoot everybody." Zach didn't tell any one.

At the fourth dimension information technology had all only seemed stupid — embarrassing, really, but Nik trying to get a reaction out of people.

But now a detective was across from Zach, asking if he had known what Nik was going to practice. In a transcript of their conversation, released subsequently by the country attorney's office, the detective warns Zach that regime are going to rummage through Nik'south phone.

"Zip on his phone is going to show that y'all knew he was gonna do this today?" the detective asked.

"No," Zach answered. "I guarantee it."

For nigh two hours, Zach stuttered and stammered, talking in circles, trying to explain.

"You accept to empathize him where, like, I realize, like, he'due south not that bad," Zach said. "I just — I don't know. I experience bad because, like I experience like I haven't, like, been like a existent brother to him. I experience like I kind of allow people make fun of him. Like I — people — I wouldn't stick up for him."

"Well, you know, hindsight'south always 20/xx," the detective said. "Y'all tin't blame yourself for situations like this."

"I hateful," Zach said. "I could have told somebody, like . . . when I found — when I saw this —"

He told the detective near the shotgun, the song, the texts.

"Is he going to become the death penalty?" Zach asked.

The detective wouldn't say.

When they were finished, Zach had another question for him: "At that place's cypher that I tin can practise to become him out of this situation, correct?"

"No," the detective said. "Unfortunately not."

But what he could do was talk to his blood brother. Right now. In another room, Nik had been under interrogation for hours, describing what he did, rambling near a demon who told him to "Fire. Kill. Destroy," hitting himself in the head and whispering, "I just want to die at present."

And then he asked for an attorney, meaning a detective couldn't keep asking questions until ane was present. Instead he could bring in Zach, and lookout man to see what Nik said. A video camera in the room recorded it all, and the footage — edited by the state — was later on released to the media.

"Okay Zach, accept a seat," the detective said, pointing to the plastic chair across from Nik. Zach sabbatum and looked at his blood brother. Nik was wearing a stake blue infirmary gown. His hands were cuffed backside his back. His left foot was chained to the floor.

"What exercise you lot remember mom would think right at present," Zach pleaded, "If she was —"

"She would weep," Nik said immediately.

"People recall y'all're a monster at present," Zach said.

"A monster?" Nik asked.

"You're non acting similar yourself," Zach said, his acrimony showing at present. "Why? Similar we've — This is not who you are. Like, come up on. Why did you lot do this?"

"I'm sorry," Nik whispered.

Zach tilted his head toward the ceiling. "This is not even a game. You're non gonna wake up and exist out of here," he said, and and then he was reminded of another memory of Nik. "Remember when mom died? Remember we were walking down the hallway and I told you?"

Nik shook his head.

"You probably don't because you just did some f–ed up s—," Zach said. "I told you when we were walking down the hallway that it's only me and you, and I had your dorsum."

Zach leaned forrard. "I know y'all, y'all probably felt like you had nobody simply I, I care about you. . . . I know I made information technology seem like when we were growing upwardly that I hated you. . . . just truth is I merely didn't want to look like a — I didn't want to look weak. I love you with all my eye."

You lot're not acting like yourself ... This is not who yous are.

Zach Cruz

Nik started to shake.

"I know what yous did today," Zach said. "Other people await at me like I'k crazy for fifty-fifty — and I don't, I don't care what other people remember. Like, you're my brother. I love you. I desire — I want you to —"

Nik was fully crying now, letting out frantic, high-pitched sobs. Zach's head was in his hands. He slammed his hand on the table and turned to the detective.

"Tin can I hug him?" he asked.

He stood up, walked over to Nik and wrapped both arms effectually his blood brother.

Later he was arrested for trespassing at Stoneman Douglas, Zachary Cruz appears in court in Fort Lauderdale on March 29, 2018. He was in custody for 10 days. (Susan Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel/Pool/Associated Press)

A month after, those arms were in handcuffs, pinned behind Zach's back. One sheriff'southward deputy was guiding him into a cruiser equally another yanked a hat off his head.

Someone had chosen the cops when they saw Zach riding his skateboard through the parking lot of Stoneman Douglas Loftier School.

"I just wanted to kinda take it all in," Zach told the deputies, but they arrested him anyway, for trespassing on school grounds.

His bond was set at $25, the local standard for a second-caste misdemeanor. That night, someone paid the fee on Zach'south behalf. But the Broward County Sheriff's Section didn't release him.

The next twenty-four hours, Zach went before a judge with 3 sheriff'southward deputies standing backside him. He got the feeling they thought he was dangerous. And then Zach heard the prosecutor say "he has all the same flags present equally his brother." She referenced his juvenile record — he had ridden his skateboard on a constabulary auto and shoplifted from Target. She said he posed a threat of "intimidation and danger" to the Stoneman Douglas victims.

The judge upped his bail to $500,000.

Zach remained in custody for x days — most of which was spent in a psychiatric facility followed by a lonely cell where he was placed on suicide lookout, despite Zach'due south insistence that he was not suicidal.

"He was scared, but he was in no mode a danger to himself or others," said Joseph Kimok, who was serving as Zach's assigned defense attorney at the time.

Kimok was in his office working on Zach's example when he was unexpectedly visited by two attorneys from a house called Nexus Services, which he had never heard of.

"I got the feeling they were looking for an introduction to Zach," Kimok remembered.

Nexus, he learned past searching online, runs a bail servicing company that offers undocumented immigrants a way out of detention — if they agree to wear GPS ankle monitors that cost them more than $400 a month. Advocacy groups and immigrants themselves accept accused Nexus of preying on the undocumented — allegations that the company's co-founder and CEO Mike Donovan says are ridiculous and unsubstantiated.

Equally Donovan fended off lawsuits by immigrants and investigations past state and federal agencies, he was using the pro-bono legal wing of Nexus to take on high-profile ceremonious rights cases effectually the country.

After white supremacists descended on Charlottesville for a 2017 rally that turned mortiferous, Nexus sued the city and its police chief, accusing them of failing to prevent the clashes. As the Trump administration began separating immigrant families at the U.S. border last year, Nexus challenged the policy in court and invited reporters to witness emotional reunions between parents and children.

At present Donovan wanted to help Zach. In one case Zach was offered probation in exchange for pleading guilty, Nexus contacted Rocxanne Deschamps, the guardian Zach and his dogs were nonetheless living with. They arranged a time for Zach to meet Donovan, who had been to jail himself for writing bad checks before starting his company. Donovan wanted Zach to sue Broward officials for not releasing him when his bail was first paid.

On the solar day in May that Donovan was ready to fly to Florida,he received a call from one of his attorneys.

"You lot're never going to believe this," Donovan remembers the lawyer saying. "Just Zach'due south been arrested again."

Deschamps had called the law on Zach for driving his mom's erstwhile Kia without a license. In an email from her attorney, Deschamps said she'd warned Zach that if he didn't terminate taking the car, she would report him for violating his probation — and she did.

Donovan speedily hired a local lawyer to secure Zach's release. He notwithstanding traveled to Florida, along with his hubby and company co-founder, Richard Moore, and their and then-14-year-quondam son, Sam.

He held a news briefing outside the Fort Lauderdale jail where Zach and Nik were detained to announce a lawsuit against the head of the jail, the state's attorney and the judge.

"We have a toll-free, 24-hr-a-day, seven-day-a-calendar week hotline," Donovan said from a Nexus-logoed lectern. "Anyone, anywhere in the country tin contact that hotline if their civil rights have been abused."

Mike Donovan, CEO of Nexus Services, hugs Zach in May later on a Florida judge gave the teenager permission to movement to Virginia to serve his probation at that place. (Amy Beth Bennett/Due south Florida Lord's day-Sentinel/Pool/Associated Press)

That afternoon, Zach walked out of the jail with a GPS monitor strapped to his ankle. He followed Donovan past reporters and into an SUV. They drove to the Conrad hotel, where Zach was invited up to the family'southward room: an oceanfront penthouse suite that typically costs more than than $1,200 a night.

Then Moore took Zach to the hotel's gift shop.

"He started buying me jeans and shirts," Zach remembered. "I was similar, g–d—, I'k just getting clothes thrown at me?"

Donovan says he was taken with Zach's soft-spoken manner and the way he immediately connected with Sam.

"We spent the evening with Zach, getting to know him and getting to know that he was non this boogeyman that people fabricated him out to be," Donovan recalled. "Eventually, I said to Richard, you know, he doesn't really have anywhere to get. . . . And Richard looked at me and said, 'He'll come with u.s.a., to Virginia.' "

They asked Zach.

"I didn't know what to think at outset," Zach said. He wanted to stay close to Nik, to keep the promise that he made to his brother. But he didn't feel comfortable in South Florida anymore — and he didn't have a identify to live.

The next week, Donovan bought Zach a adjust from Men's Wearhouse and escorted him back to court. Although Zach had turned eighteen by then, he was nonetheless on probation, significant he needed a judge's permission to move out of Florida. A Nexus official testified that the company would provide Zach with a task working maintenance in its real estate partitioning and a hire-complimentary flat near its headquarters in Augusta County, Va., a rural area just westward of Charlottesville.

The judge granted his request.

"I'yard looking forward to starting a new life at that place," Zach told reporters after.

He picked upwardly Kobe and Maisey from the dog boarding facility they had been staying in. He visited his mom's grave and packed her elephant figurines.

Before the 14-hour bulldoze to Virginia began, he asked Donovan if they could terminate by Freedom Park. Zach had heard what the urban center had washed there, but he wanted to see for himself. He walked past the wooden jungle gym over to the debate.

His name was still engraved on ane of the fence posts. Beside it, Nik'southward name was gone, replaced with a piece of wood that had been left blank.

Zach hangs out with his canis familiaris Kobe and Sam Orlando, xv, in December. Orlando'southward parents, Mike Donovan and Richard Moore, have talked nigh adopting Zach. (Jessica Contrera/The Washington Post)

Zach was slumped on a couch, his eyes on a massive curved-screen television. A song by XXXTentacion thudded through the speakers. His dog Kobe was curled up abreast him. It was a December afternoon, half dozen months subsequently Zach's move to Virginia.

In his new country, in his new life, this was where Zach could usually exist found: In an upstairs room of Donovan and Moore's house, hanging out with 15-twelvemonth-quondam Sam. The age divergence didn't carp Zach, who liked having someone to watch music videos with. They spent hours in front of the Xbox, dissecting the lyrics and beats of their favorite rap songs.

"This is a proficient one, correct?" Sam asked, tapping the controller.

Zach agreed, listening for a while until he interrupted the song to say, "Put on 'Hope.' "

Sam looked at him. They had played this song dozens of times. Too many times. Sam typed it into the YouTube search bar anyway.

They knew the opening bars, the beginning words XXXTentacion would say: "Balance in peace to all the kids that lost their lives in the Parkland shooting. This song is dedicated to you."

Sam watched Zach nod along, then stop nodding, and then stare blankly ahead. Sam had a phrase for moments like this: "Zach'southward going ghost on everybody," he says.

Since moving, Zach had stopped talking to his friends in Florida — the ones who hadn't already stopped talking to him.

He'd started skating less often, and then not at all. "The skate parks here are merely like, playgrounds," he said. "With kids on scooters and their moms watching them. Information technology doesn't have the same energy."

He'd said bye to his dog Maisey, whose dorsum legs had stopped working in her one-time age. Putting her downwards felt similar losing a fellow member of his family again.

He didn't similar Halo anymore, or any video games with guns in them. Or movies with guns in them, or music with the sound of gunfire. All of it made him envision Nik in the Stoneman Douglas hallways, a semiautomatic burglarize in his hands.

For a while he lived in his own apartment, just he decided that he felt safer, improve, when he was inside Donovan and Moore's spacious business firm at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac.

Outside, there is armed security at all times. Donovan liked to joke he hired the guards because of the lawsuits against his company simply kept them for the teenagers.

Donovan allowed a reporter to spend two afternoons with Zach in Virginia and two in Florida. At no fourth dimension was Zach allowed to speak without the presence of Nexus officials.

At Donovan'south home, a Nexus spokesman followed Zach upstairs to the game room. At Nexus headquarters, a visitor official hovered over Zach'due south shoulder, telling him what to say equally he spoke on the phone. In Florida, where Zach revisited the parks he used to skate in, an armed security guard, Donovan and 5 other Nexus officials came to lookout man. Later, Donovan acknowledged that his employees were recording and photographing interactions between Zach and the announcer.

Besides occasionally turning to inquire if he was immune to answer a question, Zach paid little attention to his entourage of handlers.

He expressed nothing but appreciation for Donovan and Moore, who provided him with his own sleeping room, gave him keys to a Ford Trek after he earned his driver's license and paid to fly him to Florida any fourth dimension Nik had a hearing. The couple talked almost officially adopting Zach, even though he was now an adult.

"They literally saved me. If I didn't meet Mike and Richard, I don't know what would have happened," Zach said. "They feel like parents to me. . . . If I left, I wouldn't find that anywhere else."

Sasha Hickerson, left, and Robin Fife back-trail Zach as he makes a telephone call in December for his anti-bullying organization, called We Isolate No-one. (Julia Rendleman/For The Washington Post)

Rather than performing the promised maintenance job, Zach began accompanying Donovan and Moore on business trips across the land. Then he was given an role to run his own extension of the Nexus brand: an anti-bullying organisation — inspired by Nik — called "We Isolate No-one," or WIN. Its core was a 24-hour hotline students could call to report bullying. The hotline would be answered by Nexus employees at i of the company's existing call centers. Nexus would then inform the caller'south school of the issue. If the problem was non resolved, Nexus would pursue legal action against the schoolhouse.

In June, Nexus organized a news briefing to announce WIN'southward launch. Zach constitute himself in a suit again, continuing at a lectern in the National Printing Order in Washington reading a prepared voice communication about how WIN would one mean solar day have chapters in high schools and middle schools throughout the land.

"I cannot stand here today to defend my brother or make excuses for him," Zach told a room total of reporters. "However, I tin say very clearly today that our schools all across the country have ticking time bombs in them . . . "

"Every twenty-four hours and every nighttime I think to myself about how this could accept been prevented," he said. "And information technology haunts me."

When the reporters were gone, and his suit jacket was off, when he was alone in his bedroom at dark, Zach stayed awake rewatching cellphone and security footage of the shooting.

"Falling asleep is the hardest office for me," he said.

Every day and every night I recall to myself well-nigh how this could accept been prevented. And it haunts me.

Zach Cruz

He sometimes came up with song lyrics to describe his feelings. His babyhood dream of condign a pro skater had been replaced with a vague notion that he wanted to piece of work in the music industry. He wanted to become his high school degree starting time. But he hadn't signed upwardly for whatsoever classes.

When he wasn't at home in the game room or on a Nexus business trip, he spent fourth dimension at the company headquarters, where the employees all knew him by name. He reviewed reports from the WIN hotline. In the first half dozen months, in that location were 414 callers. Some people sounded truly drastic for assist. Others seemed to be calling only considering they wanted to talk to Zach.

The corners of the Internet that had long attracted people obsessed with Columbine and other mass shootings had spawned the "Cruzers," who were fascinated past Nik, and by extension, Zach. They drew fan fine art of the brothers, discussed their childhood photos and alerted each other whenever Zach posted something new on his Instagram folio. Zach said he ignores them, and the messages they send him.

In September, when the Miami Herald published a story identifying Zach and Nik'due south biological mother for the first time, he tried to ignore that, besides. Donovan and Moore told him about 62-yr-old Brenda Woodard, who has been arrested 28 times for drug use and fierce outbursts, the story said, including beating a partner with a tire iron. Zach refused to read information technology.

"I don't expect at that lady as my mom," he said. "My mom was my adopted mom. It doesn't change annihilation."

He was interested only in what was going to happen to Nik, which was why he returned to Broward County for every procedural hearing. On the twenty-four hour period of Nik's January hearing, Zach tried to mind for phrases he could understand. The attorneys were sparring with each other, arguing over which side was at mistake for the lack of a trial appointment almost a year afterward 17 people were gunned downwards.

"I sympathise that the country of Florida believes that the guilt stage is rather straightforward and simple," Nik'southward public defender Melisa McNeill said. "Only the moment that they file observe of intent to seek the death penalty and impale Mr. Cruz, it becomes an entirely dissimilar example."

She reminded the courtroom that in exchange for a life sentence, Nik would plead guilty.

"I accept to protect my customer's rights," she said. Watching her, Zach got the feeling she truly wanted to spare Nik's life. Eventually, she would have to convince only ane juror that he didn't deserve the death penalty.

But subsequently Zach left the court, passing by the people whose lives, like his, had been forever inverse by Nik's deportment, he felt like he knew what was coming for his brother: "He doesn't have much fourth dimension left on this earth."

'You excited to run across him, Zach?" Donovan asked as they hurried upwards the steps of the jail.

"Yeah," Zach said, even though he didn't think what they were nigh to do actually counted as seeing his brother.

They checked their phones into the lockers virtually the door and once more emptied their pockets for security. A deputy escorted them upward the stairs and into a room filled with rows of computer screens. Zach said later that he sat at one in the back corner. He picked up the phone beside it.

The screen turned on. His brother was waiting to talk to him.

Zach enters a courtroom for his blood brother's status hearing on Jan. 8. "I always carry information technology with me," Zach said of the Stoneman Douglas shooting. "Every day." (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun-Sentinel/Pool/Associated Press)

Nik never made heart contact with him in courtroom the day before, and at present, because of the angle of the camera set in Nik's cell, Zach could just actually see the top of Nik's head.

"How's it going?" Zach said, and then he had one hour to be there for his brother before the screen would shut off again.

He learned that because Nik was accused of assaulting a jail officeholder, he was at present in solitary solitude for 23 hours a day, a punishment that left him even more than bored than before. He said he had been sticking his head in the water for fun.

"Similar, in the toilet?" Zach remembered saying.

"No," Nik answered. "The sink."

They talked virtually the regime shutdown, and how cold it was getting in Virginia. Nik said information technology was always cold in the jail.

"How's Kobe?" Nik asked, and as Zach started to explicate that he was doing adept, Nik asked again about Maisey, the dog that had to exist put down.

They had already talked about it. Zach said he reminded his brother that Maisey's legs had stopped working. It was her time. Nik seemed fixated.

"Just why did you practice it?" he asked.

Zach repeated himself.

"Why did you do it?" Nik said once again.

"Can we merely — " Zach stammered. "Can we just not talk nearly death right at present?"

Nik dropped it. Zach tried to retrieve of something else to talk nigh. He wasn't sure how much time they had left.

"In case information technology shuts off, I love you," he said.

"I honey you, too," Nik said, and then almost right away, the screen went black.

Julie Tate and Mark Berman contributed to this story.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2019/01/25/feature/his-brother-confessed-to-gunning-down-17-people-in-parkland-but-hes-the-only-family-zach-cruz-has-left/

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