Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Judge grants Zachary Cruz approval to move to Virginia
Zachary Cruz, brother of Parkland high school shooter Nikolas Cruz, can move out of Florida to take advantage of a job and apartment offer in Virginia, a Broward judge ruled Friday morning.
“I feel pretty good about it,” Cruz, 18, said from the witness stand. “I have an opportunity there that I don’t have here.”
After hearing from Cruz and from Terry Ann Johnson, the woman who will oversee his progress, Broward County Judge Melinda Brown decided to let Cruz go.
Brown had sentenced Cruz to six months’ probation on a trespassing charge in March.
“I’m not going to stop you,” Brown said. “I’m going to send you to Virginia.”
Cruz will likely be leaving Broward County as early as today.
Cruz was first arrested outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on March 19, where his brother killed 14 students and three staff members a month earlier.
The trespassing case was unusual. Cruz was detained on a $500,000 bond. Most defendants would have gone home after posting $25.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office used the trespassing arrest to demand Cruz turn over his guns. He didn’t have any.
Cruz was released as part of a plea deal, then arrested a second time earlier this month, this time for allegedly violating his probation.
Like his older brother before him, Zachary Cruz has been kicked out of the home of Rocxanne Deschamps, who became a surrogate mother to the Cruz brothers after their mother died in November.
It was Deschamps who called the Broward Sheriff’s Office to let them know Cruz was driving a car without a license or insurance, which led to his second arrest.
Prosecutor Sarahnell Murphy quizzed Cruz on his ability to follow the instructions of the woman who would oversee his progress in Virginia when he wouldn’t listen to Deschamps.
“We didn’t have a good relationship,” he said. “I’ll have a fresh relationship with these people.”
Johnson is the director of Serve by Nexus, a Virginia-based program that helps jail inmates after their release. The charity is overseen by the same private company, Nexus Services, that is funding Zachary Cruz’s defense and suing the Broward Sheriff’s Office, the State Attorney’s Office and Broward County Judge Kim Mollica, who imposed the $500,000 bond.
Johnson said Cruz will have a maintenance job, a free apartment for a year, and receive regular counseling services.
Like Cruz, Johnson said she had a brother who was a mass shooter, though she declined to name him. She said her brother shot and wounded a dozen people, so she could relate to Cruz.
The prosecutor said she was not entirely comfortable with the proposed move, but laid out a list of conditions she said would reassure her office. Among those conditions, she said, were bans on contacting Stoneman Douglas students, drugs or alcohol, and possession of firearms.
Brown imposed those conditions and a host of others, including a requirement that Cruz stay off of school campuses unless he is enrolling or enrolled. He also must report any change of address or employment, and check in by mail with a probation officer.
Cruz also told Murphy that he had not done “anything too bad” to make Florida officials worried that he was going to commit crimes.
Brown did not accept that reassurance, warning Cruz that any violation of the law will land him back in a Broward jail cell.
“You are in a position of feeling that driving without a license is not a big thing,” she said. “There is no violation that is a small violation.”
“I feel pretty good about it. I have an opportunity there that I don’t have here.”
Zachary Cruz, 18, about being able to move to Virginia