Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, FL — Courtesy: Shutterstock — Katherine Welles
According to reports, a jury has convicted Scot Peterson, the police officer who avoided the Parkland, Florida, high school where a gunman shot and murdered 17 people in 2018, not guilty of child negligence and other crimes relating to his response to the massacre.
According to NBC News, Peterson, 60, sobbed after the verdict was read. The maximum term for the charges was more than 96 years in jail.
The long-serving school resource officer was the subject of a landmark trial. Peterson, according to the prosecution, failed to protect the victims of the high school shooting because he hid outside for the final four minutes and fifteen seconds of the shooting rather than entering the structure during the slaughter.
In the bloodiest high school shooting in American history, the Valentine’s Day attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Peterson, and his defense attorneys have argued that he was unaware of the source of the gunshots. The armed school officer claimed that’s why he didn’t enter the structure.
“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,” Peterson’s lawyer Mark Eiglarsh had told the jury, per CNN.
However, the prosecution said that Peterson’s decision to stay outside the structure allowed the shooter to carry out his murderous spree “at his leisure” and that the officer “left children trapped inside of the building with a predator unchecked,” Assistant State Attorney Kristen Gomes told the jury.
The shooter was still on the first floor of the structure when Peterson arrived, according to a report written by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission following the shooting. Peterson waited outside as the shooter continued his murderous spree on the third level of the school.
According to CNN, Peterson entered a not-guilty plea to 11 charges, including seven counts of criminal child maltreatment, three counts of culpable carelessness, and one count of perjury.
The eight students and two faculty members who died or were injured on the third floor were expressly mentioned in the seven felonies for child negligence. According to The Associated Press, Peterson was not charged in relation to the 11 victims who died on the first floor before he arrived at the site.
Peterson has been branded a “coward” by the families of the 14 pupils and three staff members who died in the massacre.
In the weeks leading up to the trial, Peterson said to The Washington Post, “I’ve been living a nightmare that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”
Last year, the shooter was given a life sentence without the possibility of release. Peterson had retired and relocated to a community in North Carolina, some 750 miles distant.
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Melissa’s career in writing started more than 20 years ago. Today, she lives in South Florida with her husband and two boys.
