A former school security officer was found not guilty Thursday of failing to confront the gunman who massacred 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
Scot Peterson, who was a Broward County sheriff’s deputy and worked as a resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, was charged in 2019 with seven counts of child neglect, three counts of culpable neglect and one count of perjury.
She broke down in tears when the unanimous decision was read Thursday.
The charges carried a maximum potential sentence of 96 1/2 years in state prison, the Broward County State’s Attorney’s Office said.
Seventeen students, faculty and staff were killed in the shooting on February 14, 2018, and 17 others were injured.
Peterson, 60, was the only other person at the school with a gun when the shooter opened fire. He was forced to retire after the school shooting.
He was arrested in Broward County after a 15-month investigation found he “refused to investigate the origin of the shots, retreated during the active shooting while the victims were being shot, and ordered other law enforcement agencies to who arrived on the scene to stay 500 feet away from the building,” according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Former Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School resource officer Scot Peterson during his trial at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on June 23, 2023.Amy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP Pool File
The department’s commissioner, Rick Swearingen, said in a news release that Peterson “did absolutely nothing” to stop the shooting.
“There can be no excuse for their complete inaction and there is no doubt that their inaction cost lives,” Swearingen added.
Peterson’s previous lawyers have denounced the charges against him as “unprecedented” and “spurious.”
“The State’s actions appear to be nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at politically motivated retribution against Mr. Peterson,” attorney Joseph DiRuzzo said in a statement to NBC News in 2019. “The charges against Mr. . Peterson should be dismissed immediately.”
A former student pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. In 2022, a jury spared him the death penalty and recommended he be sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 2018 massacre.
In an interview on NBC’s “TODAY” show about three months after the shooting, the former guard apologized to the families of the 17 victims.
“I’m sorry,” she tearfully said in the interview.
The 33-year law enforcement veteran said at the time that it wasn’t fear that kept him from rushing into the school as the gunman stalked the halls with an AR-15. It was the chaos, the miscommunication and his assumption that the shots were being fired outside by a sniper.
“I didn’t get it right,” Peterson admitted. “But it wasn’t because some, ‘Oh, I don’t want to go into this building.’ Oh, I don’t want to face anyone in there. It wasn’t like that at all.”
