FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. >> Seven weeks into one of the rarest of American legal proceedings — the trial of a surviving gunman in a school shooting — another horrifying mass murder at a school convulsed the nation.

The massacre in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24 reverberated in a courtroom more than 1,400 miles away, where attorneys were deep into selecting jurors to decide the fate of the young man who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, four years ago.

Attorneys for the gunman urged the judge to delay the trial. They argued that the inescapable news of more schoolchildren shot dead in classrooms would inflame potential jurors and that the shootings in Uvalde and in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, had caused a national “wave of emotion.”

But the trial went on. On Monday, after nearly three months of jury selection, attorneys are scheduled to deliver opening statements.

— The New York Times