FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Scot Peterson, the school resource officer accused of hiding from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting instead of trying to engage the gunman and protect the students, broke down in a Broward courthouse hallway Wednesday, saying he “never” would have sat idle while students and staff were killed.
Standing outside the courtroom where his lawyer had just argued to dismiss child negligence charges against him, Peterson lost his composure, fighting back tears as he described how his life changed after Nikolas Cruz shot and killed 17 students and staff at the Parkland school.
“I didn’t do anything there to try to hurt any child there on the scene,” he said, his voice cracking as he continued. “I did the best that I could with the information. I did the best ... I’ll never forget that day. You know, not only kids died, I have friends that died. And never for a second would I sit there and allow anyone to die, knowing that animal was in that building! Never!”
Peterson, 58, is charged with multiple counts of child neglect for failing to come to the rescue as Cruz was making his way through the school’s hallways. But the law he’s accused of breaking specifically applies to caregivers, and lawyers disagree on whether a cop on campus meets the legal definition of that term.
“The prosecutor could not find a single case in the history of our criminal justice system where a school resource officer was charged under this statute,” defense lawyer Mark Eiglarsh said during the hearing.
Eiglarsh read from numerous state laws that define a “caregiver,” one of which appears broad enough to include the former deputy and another that appears to explicitly exclude him. “This definition does not include the following persons when they are acting in an official capacity: Law enforcement officers,” he said, reading from one statute.
Prosecutors say courts have broadened the definition of caregiver to include, under specific circumstances, a teacher, a landlord, a baby sitter and even a kidnapper. Broward Circuit Judge Martin Fein asked Eiglarsh why he shouldn’t let a jury settle the question.
“You’re asking me to find the [Florida Supreme] Court has applied a higher standard of care to a kidnapper than to a law enforcement officer?” he asked.
But Eiglarsh said the law specifically excludes law enforcement from the definition of “caregiver.”
Killoran was first in the hearing to raise the prospect of letting a jury decide whether Peterson was a caregiver on Feb. 14, 2018.
“School resource officers are inherently different from other law enforcement officers,” said prosecutor Chris Killoran. “This is a novel area. There is no specific case law on this.”
Fein did not indicate when he would rule.
Peterson has been sued, along with Cruz, the Broward school district and the Broward Sheriff’s Office, by more than a dozen victims of the Stoneman Douglas shooting.
A federal appeals court ruled in late 2018 that law enforcement did not have a legal duty to protect the students that could form the basis of a federal lawsuit. Peterson has been charged and sued under state law, and the civil court judge overseeing the lawsuits said that duty does exist.
Peterson’s statements outside the courtroom were in response to an attempt by the family of Stoneman Douglas survivor Anthony Borges to complain to the judge about the slow pace of the case. The family is frustrated to see other, more complicated cases getting resolved while the victims of Stoneman Douglas wait for justice in the cases against Cruz and, to a lesser extent, Peterson.
Fein did not allow the Borges family to make a statement in court, but Peterson said he did not want to appear insensitive to the family’s plight. “I don’t want anyone to think I don’t want him to say how he feels,” Peterson said before defending his actions on the day of the shooting.
