The emotional half-sister of convicted Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz took the witness stand Monday to relive the “horrible” childhood they endured.
Danielle Woodard, 35, described the hardships of living with an addicted mother she only referred to as Brenda.
“[1998] was the time of my life that I lived with Brenda, and Nikolas was developing in her polluted womb," she testified.
PARKLAND TRIAL
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Danielle Woodard was a child when her mother's alcohol and crack cocaine addictions began, and they continued during Brenda Woodard's pregnancy with Nikolas Cruz.
"I noticed she looks pregnant. She has a baby bump,” Danielle Woodard recalled from when she was about 11-years-old. “I asked her, ‘Are you pregnant?’ and she said, ‘I got raped.'"
Danielle Woodard said she loved her brother and being in court was only the second time she had been in the same room with Nikolas Cruz since he was born.
“I held him. He was full of life. He was moving around," she recalled of his birth. "[He] was real squirmy.”
However, their mother planned to give him up for adoption.
“I looked at my mom and said, ‘can we keep him?’” but Brenda Woodard started screaming at her, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her out of the apartment, she said.
Danielle Woodard talked about being forced to urinate in a pill bottle so her mother could submit it for random drug testing.
“Brenda definitely had a drug problem,” Danielle said. “Crack cocaine, major problem with alcohol, all the time. [She smoked cigarettes] like a chimney.”
There was a time Danielle Woodard shared an efficiency apartment with Brenda Woodard and her mother Dorothy Mayor.
“Brenda came in demanding money from my grandmother [for drugs],” she said. “She made my grandmother strip naked, but [Dorothy] kept her shoes on because that’s where the money was for the rent.”
Danielle Woodard loved her grandmother and said Dorothy was too old, and Danielle was too young, to fight back.
On another occasion, Danielle came home from school to find an eviction notice on the front door, all her belongings on the front lawn, and her cat was missing. She said they slept in the car before going to a crack house.
“A bunch of bums… a bunch of junkies were there,” she testified.
She went on to explain how she became a 12-year-old runaway, a drug abuser, and how she turned to a life of crime resulting in numerous arrests and two prison terms. She was wearing jail overalls in court and has more charges pending in Miami-Dade County.
She testified she was in prison when told her half-brother killed 17 students and staff and wounded 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Feb. 14, 2018.
“How did [my upbringing] affect my life? In many ways. In many ways," she testified. "[Brenda] just introduced me to a life that no child should ever be introduced to.”
