A former school resource officer who stayed outside during the February 2018 massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has been found not guilty of failing to protect the victims.
Florida prosecutors had accused Scot Peterson of ignoring his training and doing nothing as 17 people, including 14 students, were gunned down in the school on February 14, 2018, in what remains the deadliest ever US high school shooting, CNN reported.
His attorney argued the then-deputy did not enter the school’s 1200 building, the site of the attack, because he could not tell where the shots were coming from.
When the judge read the verdict on Thursday, the 60-year-old wept in court as he was found not guilty of seven counts of felony child neglect, three counts of culpable negligence and one count of perjury.
“I’ve got my life back,” Peterson, a former deputy for the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, told reporters outside court, describing the years since the shooting as “an emotional roller coaster”.
Peterson also said that he would like to speak to the parents of the students who were killed, reports the BBC.
“If they need to really know the truth of what occurred… I’ll be there for them,” he was quoted as saying.
“The only person to blame was that monster,” Peterson said of the shooter Nikolas Cruz, a former student of the school.
“It wasn’t any law enforcement, nobody on that scene, from BSO, Coral Springs. 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 at that point.”
The outcome, however, was a disappointment for some of the victims’ families, many of whom were upset by a jury’s decision last year not to unanimously recommend the death penalty for Cruz.
He is serving a sentence of life in prison without parole after pleading guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.
Tony Montalto, whose daughter Gina was one of the students murdered, said he continued to blame Peterson for not trying to stop the shooting.
“His inaction contributed to the shock, the devastation of students and teachers at that school,” the BBC quoted Montalto as saying to mediapersons.
“We don’t understand how this jury looked at the evidence that was presented and found him not guilty.”
“It’s another failure. The system did it again and again and again,” Manuel Oliver, the father of student Joaquin Oliver who also died in the massacre, told CNN.
“I’m watching this individual crying like a victim. He signed for a job that he did not deliver. Shame on him for that, too,” he added.
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