The trial of a former sheriff’s deputy accused of failing to intervene in the course of the 2018 Parkland school capturing in Florida has begun, marking the primary time a legislation enforcement officer has been criminally prosecuted for inaction during a faculty taking pictures in the United States. Scot Peterson, who served as a school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, faces eleven felony expenses, including youngster neglect and culpable negligence. He has pleaded not responsible.
Peterson’s defence team, led by lawyer Mark Eiglarsh, has warned that a successful prosecution might set a dangerous precedent. Eiglarsh argued that Peterson had been “sacrificed” to deflect public scrutiny from the Parkland incident, which left 17 people dead and 17 others injured and stays one of the deadliest school shootings in US history. The defence lawyer claimed that Peterson’s prosecution was an try and shift blame away from other officials, together with Scott Israel, the Broward County sheriff at the time.
On the other hand, Broward County Assistant State Attorney Steven Klinger offered a unique account of the events on February 14, 2018, when then-19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, a former scholar, opened hearth within the school. Klinger identified that Peterson left his workplace 36 seconds after Cruz began shooting but in the end remained outside the constructing the place the attack was happening, taking shelter 23 metres away.
“He’s the lead security person at that faculty,” Klinger informed the six-member jury. “He is trained the means to handle a state of affairs where he’s the only legislation enforcement person there to handle an lively shooter.”
According to Klinger, Peterson had an obligation to act: “You’ve got to get in there, and you’ve got to find the shooter.” The taking pictures lasted for round six minutes, but Peterson held his position for nearly 40 minutes.
In addition to three misdemeanour expenses of negligence and 7 counts of felony child neglect, Peterson faces a misdemeanour rely of perjury for his statements to investigators following the bloodbath. At the time, he said he solely heard “two, three” photographs coming from the constructing, which prosecutors have framed as a lie.
Hurry countered this narrative through the trial, emphasising the confusion many witnesses on the scene experienced. He plans to call 22 of them to testify. Eiglarsh additionally defined that Peterson’s “two, three” shots comment referred only to what he initially heard, not an overall evaluation of the gunfire that day.
Peterson has since expressed regret in the US media for what happened that day. “ Backdoor are my kids in there,” he told the TODAY Show in June 2018. “I never would have sat there and let my children get slaughtered.”