Scot Peterson was the only armed resource officer assigned to Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of a 2018 mass shooting in which 17 died.
A former Florida sheriff’s deputy who failed to confront the gunman during the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Thursday was acquitted of all charges.
Scot Peterson, former deputy for the Broward County Sheriff’s Office who was the lone armed resource officer assigned to the Parkland high school when 17 people were fatally shot February 14, 2018, was found not guilty of seven counts of felony child neglect, three counts of culpable negligence and one count of perjury. Peterson wept in court on Thursday as the jury read his acquittal in the same courtroom where the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, was sentenced to life in prison in the fall.
Peterson told reporters outside of the courtroom that he „got my life back“ and said that no one should forget the victims of the shooting.
„Only person to blame was that monster,“ Peterson said, referring to Cruz. „It wasn’t any of the law enforcement … Everybody did the best they could, we did the best we could with the information we had. And God knows we wish we had more.“
The jury’s decision to let Peterson walk free invoked anger and confusion from several family members who lost loved ones during the Parkland massacre. Prosecutors had argued in court that the former deputy had failed to confront Cruz during his six-minute attack, and Peterson’s actions have previously been characterized by both law enforcement and Parkland families as cowardly.
„You know, there’s a lot of things that we expect from our school resource officers,“ he added.
