PARKLAND, Fla. – The Coral Springs Police Department has detailed how its officers responded to the Parkland school shooting in newly released documents.
The documents released Friday are first person accounts from 38 officers. The officers described how each of them carried out their duties at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14.
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Seventeen people were killed and more than a dozen others were injured in the shooting. Gunman Nikolas Cruz dropped his AR-15 rifle at the school and blended in with students as they fled the building. Coral Springs police officers arrested Cruz about 30 minutes later not far from the school.
Friday's documents detail the response at the high school campus and do not directly address Cruz's arrest. Coral Springs police were among a number of law enforcement agencies that responded to the shooting. The Broward County Sheriff's Office has been criticized for its handling of shooting.
Scot Peterson, a BSO school resource officer, quit after Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Peterson did not engage Cruz during the shooting. Peterson has said he's "no coward" and maintains he was unsure where the gunfire was coming from.
Some of the officers were off-duty at the time, but they rushed to the school after receiving text messages about an active shooting situation at the high school.
Most of the officers handled crowd control, assisted special needs students and helped parents as they were reunited with their children at a local hotel.
Some of the officers, who were not aware Cruz had fled, set up positions at various exits of the affected school building in an attempt to intercept the gunman.
Others detailed how they conducted sweeps of floors of the building where shooting took place. Inside, the officers found dead and injured victims and encountered students and teachers inside locked rooms and closets.
"I observed a male deceased lying on the ground next to the west-side entry doors. I also observed what appeared to be bullet holes through the third-floor glass windows," Sgt. Stefan Wiesing wrote in his report.