A former school resource officer who stayed outside of the building during a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Feb. 2018 was found not guilty by a jury Thursday.
Scot Peterson, 60, was acquitted of seven counts of child neglect and three counts of culpable negligence for the deaths and injuries of 10 people on the third floor of a building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, according to the New York Times.
Peterson was also found not guilty of a count of perjury for comments he made after the shooting, the Times reported. The jury deliberated for about 19 hours over four days.
“I got my life back after 4½ years,” Peterson said outside the courtroom following the hearing, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “It’s been an emotional roller coaster.”
Peterson was a former Broward County sheriff’s deputy, according to the Times, and was the only armed resource officer at the high school at the time of the mass shooting on Feb. 14, 2018.
In a shooting carried out by a former student at the high school, 17 people were killed and 17 were injured, the Times reported. The gunman was sentenced to life in prison last year.
Other than the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, Peterson is the only other person to be charged in the shooting at the school, the Sun Sentinel reported.
Peterson was accused of ignoring training and doing nothing when the shooting was taking place, CNN reported.
The trial was one of the first in the country against a police officer for not taking action during a mass shooting.
If Peterson had been convicted he could have been sentenced to nearly 100 years in prison, The Associated Press reported.
