A US police officer on trial for “willful negligence” for taking cover in a Florida high school shooting was cleared of all charges against him on Thursday.
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Scotsman Peterson, 60, has been accused of failing to arrest Nikolas Cruz, who, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, shot dead 14 students and three adults at his former high school on February 14, 2018 in Parkland.
After four days of deliberation, the jury found him not guilty. When the verdict was announced, he burst into tears.
“I’m getting my life back,” he told the media as he left court, while his attorney, Mark Eiglarsh, regretted going through “four years of sorrow and heartache.”
“Tell me about the suffering!” Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin died in the bloodbath, reacted angrily. Scot Peterson had “obviously made a mistake” and “should hold back,” he added on CNN.
Instead of looking for the shooter, the Parkland High School security officer “hid in a booth” for 48 minutes, according to prosecutors.
Scot Peterson has always maintained that he stayed outside the building because he didn’t know where the shots came from. At the helm, his attorney presented him as a “scapegoat” in this drama that had rocked America.
His trial was closely followed as it could have set a precedent.
AFP
The National Association of Agents Deployed in Schools (Nasro) told AFP that it had never seen prosecution of police officers who remained passive during a school shooting or violence.
Had Scot Peterson been found guilty, other police officers might have been concerned, particularly those on duty during the Uvalde Elementary School massacre in Texas in May 2022, which killed 19 children and two teachers.
Dozens of them had been waiting for more than an hour in front of the classrooms where the shooter had taken refuge.
Nikolas Cruz, for his part, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison in 2022 by a jury that denied the death penalty after three months of grueling hearings.