Law&Crime Sidebar - Parkland Massacre Survivor Makes Major Deal with School Shooter

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

According to a new agreement between survivor Anthony Borges and the Parkland shooter, Borges will have to grant his permission for the gunman to appear in any sort of interview. The killer also agreed to donate his brain to science when he dies, so it can be studied. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber speaks with Borges’ attorney Alex Arreaza about the decision and what this means going forward.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’ve ever been injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/YouTubeTakeoverLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. At that time, I didn't know. I just felt like one shot. Right. But I got five times. Pardon? Five times. Five times?

Yes. Where were you shot? And my leg, my other leg, in the back. And over here in the RV. The Parkland School shooter has just an... entered into a shocking agreement with one of his surviving victims, Anthony Borges. We will bring on Anthony's attorney, Alex Ariaza, to explain what just happened. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber.

We have an absolutely stunning development in the Parkland School shooting case. Remember, this was back in 2018 when a gunman opened fire at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School out in Parkland, Florida. He ended up killing 17 people, wounding 17 others. Shooter pled guilty after a penalty phase trial. The jury recommended he be sentenced to life in prison. That was ultimately imposed, 34 consecutive life sentences. He's 25 years old now. But now I want to talk to you about one of the victims, Anthony Borges.

He was shot five times that day. He was only 15 years old, and he survived. Yeah, he underwent 14 operations, spent months. months in a hospital, lucky to be alive, you even may recall that he provided harrowing testimony at the shooter's trial about this. Tell us what happened, okay? So I was in the third floor on class personalization, 1250, I think. And I was just sitting down, the teacher just planning about the finalist exams and stuff

like that. So I was just chilling, sitting, listen to music, and then I hear something weird. like a scream and like some echo. So I turned off the music and then the alarm went on and then went off. And they went on again like two times. So everybody was confused. Everybody just got out of the class. There was like a lot of people on the hallway.

Then I decided to go down to the stairwell. So the stairwell, that was when I saw the gun and just closed. the door and start running. Okay, then what did you do? Then he shot me on my left leg. And then I saw this door like half open. Then I closed it and then I just lay down there. So then I got shot, everything got silent.

I just looked myself, check up on me. I looked everything around me. There was like, there was a person in front of me. There was another person. person on the other side. I talked to that person to reach out if it was okay or anything, and she didn't respond. That's when I stopped talking to her, I just reach out my phone and I called my mom first. She didn't answer. I called my best friend. She didn't answer and then I call my dad. So I told her everything, like goodbye and everything. I throw my phone because

I didn't want to the shooter. She's looking at me with the phone. and showed me again, so I just drove the phone. Okay, when you were on the phone, where were you? I was outside the classroom. Were you standing? No, I was shut. I was laying down in the hallway. So you were laying in the hallway? Yes.

Did you call for help or anything? I did call, yeah. Did you call in Spanish and English? Both. Both? Yes. What were you yelling? Help. Help, help.

it. Now, speaking of Anthony, in what, again, is a stunning development, the shooter and he have just entered into a legal agreement with incredible concessions, including that the shooter has apparently signed over the rights to his name to Anthony. Yes. So to explain this more, I want to bring in Anthony's attorney, Alex Ariaza, to talk more about this. Alex, so good to have you on. Did I get your last name right? I've been going back and forth. I got it right. Good. Okay, great. Thank you so much for coming on. So you have to talk to me about, first of all, how did this deal even come up? What was this agreement? Is it a settlement? Walk us through. How did this even happen? Well, initially when we sued a lot of people. And the first time that we ran, we entered into somewhat similar with the sneeds. If you remember, they're the ones they were keeping Nicholas Cruz. and the guns and that's where he was keeping the gun.

So we entered into a similar situation, into a similar agreement, which we didn't want anybody, okay, now you're connected to this and you're gonna go do the talk show circuit and write books, no, that's not gonna happen and we weren't, that's the reason that we settled that particular way with the sneeps. They couldn't go on talk shows,

they couldn't be making money off of it. And it was open, we could reopen up the case that they violated that. Now, if you went, it was kind of what inspired this. People asked me what inspired this. If you go right from the beginning, and I've been practicing law for 30 years, I don't think I've ever been around as much pain and drama and all the things that, the suffering that these parents and it's something we could all identify with because it's our own, we can imagine it being our kids.

I remember when we were thinking about how to approach Nicholas Cruz, part of what I thought about was this, well, it was a son of Sam and how all those shows were on. And then O.J. Simpson, I don't know if you remember, O.J. wrote a book if I would have done it or if I could have done it. And then there was issues of where the money was going to go, and we didn't want any of that to happen. So that's where we're like, okay, we're going to shut this down before it even gets started. Now, we were set to go to trial in July, I believe was July 22nd with another attorney that he represented four other families of victims, David Brill. But we, once when we started to the point we're preparing for it, we started seeing that as incredible as it sounds, and you said it at the beginning, he recovered, a 15-year-old recovered from five AR-15 bullets.

And I can tell you right now, if you see him right now, he looks really good. But the problem right now is the PTSD. And anything can trigger that. I mean, it helped him when the building came down a few weeks ago. I think it was a couple weeks ago. The 1,200 building, where all this happened, came down. That helped him. So when we were trying to coordinate, we sat down and what we would present to Nicholas Cruz as a settlement offer.

And basically, you know, the way that we approached him was, look, you know, you were at the, when you took your plea, you're talking about how sorry you are okay then you're going to address it here let's see how sorry you are so when I approached him I think mine's a little different because I not only I took this particular case but a lot of my trial work is in criminal so I know how to approach somebody or take a deposition with somebody in prison and it's a lot of it's a lot of work and especially him that it's this kind of strange with him because what they've done is they have they move they move him around and they don't let anybody know where he's at so it takes a lot of red tape for security reasons right for security reasons yeah yeah for security reasons and

the the the interesting part is that we finally set it up we went through all this and he really didn't have any he didn't have any issues people ask me it was back and forth now I said here's here's what we want and he signed off on it hey everybody I want to thank Morgan and Morgan for sponsoring today's law and crime YouTube takeover we are very proud to be partners with Morgan and Morgan America's largest injury law firm this is a firm that has secured verdicts and settlements for their clients in the multi millions they don't settle for lowball offers. They fight for your legal rights. They fight for what you deserve in compensation. They make the whole process easy for their clients, too, because from uploading documents

to talk to your whole legal team, it can all be done from your smartphone. There's also zero upfront fee. You only pay them if you win. So if you've ever been injured in an accident, you can easily start your claim with Morgan and Morgan by going to for thepeople.com slash YouTube takeover. Why did he agree to it, you think? Did he, didn't put up any kind of resistance was there a lawyer present for him because he's basically signing away is it is it his name image and likeness so he can't profit from it in any which way and any which way so yeah yeah i mean we we we locked it up but um you know when

you have you know i i practice for for 30 years in criminal okay so you got to remember who you're dealing with this guy is like uh a sociopathic psychopath at the highest level I mean he he will talk about and it was just an experience taking that statement from him because in during the statement and

Anthony's father was with me and as cold as anything he just apologized to him like you know I want to apologize to you about what happened what happened with your son like you know like he just bumped into your car or something or

or broke the window to your house or So I'm sorry, I'll repay it when. But, you know, that's a, that's a sociopath, that they don't understand what they did. They have no connection to it. And, you know, I was fortunate because, you know, what I studied in my undergraduate work, I could explain it to DeBorges Moore. It wasn't he was doing something to be nasty because I don't think he would have come. If there wasn't a little bit of remorse, he wouldn't have come to the table. So he wanted to atone, and that's why I believe he signed it.

There was a part of him that was sorry, but I don't know how much it was actually kind of creepy. Was there anything in particular that he said that really stood out to you other than the fact that he made this sort of apology to you and Anthony's father? Was there anything else that stood out to you about your meeting with him? I think, though, a couple, that stood out the most. Like, I don't know how he accepted. I don't know if he expected the father to accept the apology. Yeah. You know, ever since that happened, I thought about it.

Because when he apologized in open court and we had a press conference And the media asked him, do you accept his apology? And Anthony said, yes, I accept it. I mean, he's going to deal with his consequences. But there's nothing else I can do other than to accept it. It's not going to do me any good, not to accept it. So walk us through how this is going to work practically. Now that Anthony owns the rights to the shooter's name, image, and likeness,

does he plan to do anything with it? Or is this just a way for him to prevent the shooter from doing interviews and books and movies? That's exactly, that was our purpose. It's not a matter of, I mean, he will have the option to do what he want, but the objective here was there isn't going to be any book. Like, you know, if I would have done it differently, I could have gotten away with it. No, no, no. It's not, even if they're not making money, even if that's, you know,

it's coming back to see the amount of torture and pain that Nicholas Cruz caused no he's not he's not going to get a chance to even bring back those memories and that was our objective so so how would you enforce it the reason I say this you talked about O.J. Simpson right if this was a case where he signed over his name image and likeness his rights to his name there could be and if he decided to do an interview or a book and be in violation of agreement you could sue him right and he had money he was a free individual you have Nick you have this shooter who's locked away, what would be, if he decides to do an interview in violation of that agreement,

or he decides to write a book in violation of the agreement, who do you go after? Do you go after the publisher, the producer, the news agency? Do you go after him? What's a way to enforce it when he's essentially locked up away for the rest of his life? What would prevent him from doing it? Well, that's exactly what would make it, we would make it feasible to enforce it, okay? If you practice criminal law and you have to do anything with a prison, you know how slow it is and how much red tape is so when they even attempted and we

we smell it we could go get injunctive relief and get an injunction based on this agreement so you can't do anything if i if i have to if i have to talk to somebody that i'm doing an appeal for in a prison and i'm his lawyer it takes me two or three weeks yeah yeah to get all the permissions and everything so they're not going to be able to to uh you know stay below the radar be able to know anything that he does. There was another part of this agreement, too, and correct from wrong, it's that you were able to get this shooter to agree to donate his brain to research? How did that come about?

Well, when we spoke, I ran this, you know what, I had this idea when we discussed it with with the Borges. of my undergraduate work was in criminology. And I remembered that a lot of these studies were like that. Again, they were studying brains. And then I explained to them that when we, they were going through all these football players, they were getting the CTE. And I believe the NFL, what they do is that they ask other players once they died to study their brain. And really, that's how they found out, I think it's called CTE, CTE. It's the injury. And I remember with all the crazy stuff that was happening with Junior SEAT, and they started doing this. And there's a lot of work.

There's a lot of work that the board has a really good people. They're just doing everything to try to prevent this from ever happening again. And part of it was is that if you study him and And if there was some imbalance in that brain, they could be approached or attacked a certain way to prevent this from happening. And we're aware, after six years, that this guy was just full of antidepressant medication. They were putting all kinds of medication into him. So we want to see what if they find something, and I explained it to him, and I explained it to him, and he was like fine with it.

Like I said, there's a little bit, there's a little bit of remorse, not much with him. Well, I'm not surprised that he wouldn't be resistant to it because his argument during the penalty phase trial was essentially not that he wasn't at fault, but that there were all these other factors that led him to open fire that day, that there was his upbringing, there was, you know, mental health factors that were, were, that had to be considered. And clearly, the jury in that case was persuaded to the fact that they didn't impose, they didn't recommend the death penalty. So I guess I'm not surprised, right, that Nicholas Cruz believes, I mean, did he say anything?

Yes, you know, I want when I die, I want my brain to be studied. I don't want this to happen to somebody else. As I've been saying for a long time, this was out of my hands. I'm, you know, a victim of what happened to me in a way. Did he say anything like that? No, he really wasn't, he wasn't making an argument for himself. Like I said, it was almost, it was somewhat of an atonement to the Borges who was going to give him whatever he wanted, whatever he wanted. Because I don't know, and some, I think, because we're the only, I believe we're the only ones that have reached out to him.

Yeah. And attempted it. And so he wants to show something that he is sorry. and I, you know, I don't know if it's for himself personally. I mean, he's going to be in the rest of his life. It's not going to help him any other way. So I don't know, but when I asked him, I explained it to him, he was fine with it. Oh, okay.

And I want to end this by going back to Anthony. So my understanding is there was a settlement in this case when there was litigation against the school district. they were saying, but you were able to secure a $1.25 million settlement for him. How has that money? How has that impacted his life, his family's life? How is Anthony doing at this point? You talked about that he looks great, but how, if you can give us an update on how Anthony and his family are doing?

You know, physically, he looks really good. He put on a little weight. He actually looks, it looks really good. But, you know, the PTSD, it creeps up on him. And Anthony is very reserved, so you can't really tell, he's not a, he's not an outgoing, well, no, he is outgoing, but he's at the same time, he's somewhat reserved. So for Anthony to tell you if something's wrong, he, he will have to know you for a little while. In that sense, he's very private. So you can kind of have to know, I have to knowing him for a while, I can tell when things are bothering him.

And what the issue is, the PTSD. You have to understand how Anthony said something to me a while back, and he said, I really see how much you love practicing law. And I said, yeah, I do. Imagine if somebody took that from you. That's what he did to me. Because Anthony was on the road to be in a professional soccer player. He's very good. That's all he ever wanted to do. And so the piece. PTSD from the injury, you taking his dream from him, it's going to have psychological problems. He's doing the best he can with it. It's interesting you say that because Anthony's father, I believe, told the son Sentinel,

after what he took from my son, whatever he owns in this world, we should take it from him, right? And how was Anthony's father seeing the shooter face-to-face? How was that? I, when I saw he was, had real mixed feelings about it. He didn't really know how to take at that moment because you, in Nicholas saw, you saw a different guy there that he's trying to talk. And, I mean, you can see it's as messed up his whole situation is he hit the child with the destruction that he caused.

He's not much older than Anthony. So he had real mixed feelings about it. Horrible case. Very interesting development, to say the least. Please extend our best wishes to Anthony and the family. Alex Ariaza, thank you so much for coming on and breaking down this legal development for us. We really appreciate it.

Thank you. Thanks for having. All right, everybody. That's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber.

I'll speak to you next. next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.