Former Broward Sheriff's Office deputy Scot Peterson was charged over his response to the Parkland school shooting. Photo / AP
Former Broward Sheriff's Office deputy Scot Peterson was charged over his response to the Parkland school shooting. Photo / AP
Former Sheriff's Deputy Scot Peterson has been ridiculed as the "Coward of Broward" for staying outside while a gunman killed 17 students, teachers and staff members and wounded 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
This week, the choices he made on that day in February2018 led the police to charge him with seven counts of felony neglect of a child for not doing more to protect students, and with culpable negligence and perjury.
On Thursday, Peterson was released from jail on a US$39,500 bond. He had appeared in court earlier in the day, wearing khaki jail overalls and with his wrists cuffed. He seemed to avoid looking around the crowded courtroom, which was guarded by a dozen of his former colleagues from the Broward County Sheriff's office.
Officials have said Peterson, the only armed guard on campus when the shooting began, did "absolutely nothing to mitigate" the massacre.
But Peterson has told a different story. He has denied being scared, or being a coward. He replays the day over and over in his mind, he has said, wishing he knew then what he knows now. "I'm never going to get over this," he said.
Here is what Peterson has said about the shooting and his response to it.
At first, he wasn't sure if he was hearing gunfire or firecrackers
The shooting lasted less than 10 minutes, with the gunman arriving at 2:19pm and leaving by 2:27pm. Peterson arrived outside of the school's 1200 building — where the gunman was shooting students and teachers — at 2:24pm and took his position.
"Please advise, we have possible, uh, could be firecrackers," he said, according to a recording of the radio traffic. "I think we got shots fired. Possible shots fired, 1200 building."
Almost four months later, Peterson offered this commentary while watching an animated three-dimensional recreation of the crime scene with a Washington Post reporter: "That first burst of gunfire is probably what triggered the firecracker call on the school radio and then the fire alarm," he said. "I'm still running out of my office. I haven't even gotten over there. What am I supposed to do?"
He said he believed that there might be a sniper on the scene and stayed in place, not entering the 1200 building.
"I was trying to figure it out," he told the Post reporter. "I was scanning for the shooter, looking over the windows, the sidewalk, the rooftop. I thought maybe it was a sniper like in Las Vegas. I just didn't know."
He has described a scene of chaos and confusion
"There wasn't even time to think," he told The Post. "It just happened, and I started reacting."
At 2:23pm, he said into the police radio: "Make sure we get some units over here." Seconds later, he added: "We're talking about the 1200 building."
"We don't have any description yet," he said, at 2:24. "We just hear shots, what appear to be shots fired."
Other Broward County deputies arrived and shouted that shots had been fired by the football field. "We also heard it over by, inside the 1200 building," Peterson said at 2:25.
A deputy reported more students running toward the football field, and Peterson said: "I hear shots fired. Shots —."
"I have a gunshot victim," another deputy said, and Peterson yelled: "Does he know where the shooter is?"
Peterson surmised on NBC's Today show last June that he did not immediately know where the gunfire was coming from because the shooting happened in "a hurricane-proof building."
"It's hard to even hear," he said. "It's a very thick glass."
He told The Post that he only remembered hearing two or three shots: "Why didn't I hear more shots? It doesn't make sense. I should have heard them, but I didn't."
He says he is haunted by the choices he made.
Peterson has said that he often relives the attack, thinking of ways he could have confronted the gunman if only he knew where he was. He was looking for the gunman, he said, but never saw him.
"It's haunting," he said in his interview with The Post. "I've cut that day up a thousand ways with a million different what-if scenarios, but the bottom line is I was there to protect, and I lost 17. You're a hero or a coward, and that's it."
"It was all so fast," he said. "I couldn't piece it all together."
He defends himself from the second-guessing of others
"How can they keep saying I did nothing?" he asked The Post reporter and listed the actions he took: calling in the shooting on the radio, locking down the school, clearing students from the courtyard.
"It's easy to sit there for people to go, 'Oh, he should have known that that person was up there.' It wasn't that easy," he said.
He told the Today show that it was easy for people to make him "the punching bag" for what happened.
Fear was not a factor
He has categorically denied being scared.
"It haunts me that I didn't know at that moment, you know, that — those are my kids in there," he told the Today show. "I never would have sat there and let my kids get slaughtered."
He continued: "I never thought even for a moment of being scared or a coward because I was just doing things the whole time. It never entered my mind."
