A jury has acquitted Scot Peterson, the then-school resource officer who failed to act to protect students during the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
Peterson, a former Broward County sheriff’s deputy, arrived at the school’s 1200 building with his gun drawn 73 seconds before the gunman reached the third floor but backed away after he heard gunfire. He took cover outside the building for more than 45 minutes until the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was taken into police custody.
Peterson was charged with seven counts of felony child neglect for four students who were killed and three others who were wounded on the building’s third floor. He also faced three counts of misdemeanor culpable negligence for the adults shot on that floor, as well as a perjury charge for comments he made to investigators in the wake of the shooting. The charges focused on the victims killed and injured on the third floor because Peterson had not yet arrived to the building when the shootings on the first floor took place and no one was killed on the second floor.
While prosecutors accused Peterson of ignoring his training by failing to act as Cruz gunned down students and staff, the defense argued Peterson didn’t intervene because he couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from. His attorney, Mark Eiglarsh, also noted Peterson arrived on the scene without a bulletproof vest or rifle.
“To sit in the calmness of a courtroom that is chill and mellow and try to go back and Monday morning quarterback is unfair and unjust,” he said.
Several witnesses, including former students, staff and members of law enforcement acknowledged that it was hard to tell where the gunfire was coming from. However, other witnesses testified they knew the shots were coming from the 1200 building and law enforcement officers noted their training tells them to move toward the sound of gunfire and to confront the shooter.
Peterson “left behind an unrestricted killer to spend the next 4 minutes and 15 seconds wandering the halls at his leisure,” assistant state Attorney Kristen Gomes said in closing arguments. “Because when Scot Peterson ran, he left children trapped inside of the building with a predator unchecked.”
The child neglect charges stem from a Florida statute that governs caregivers. Prosecutors argued Peterson, in his work as a school resource officer, was tasked with protecting the school’s students.