FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The trial continued Tuesday for former Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputy Scot Peterson, who is accused of taking cover instead of entering the building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland where Nikolas Cruz carried out a mass shooting, leaving 17 people dead.
Peterson is charged with failing to confront the shooter before the gunman reached the building’s third floor, where he killed six people and injured four. The deputy is not charged in connection with the 11 deaths on the first floor, before he reached the building.
The victims killed on the third floor of the 1200 Building on Feb. 14, 2018, include Meadow Pollack, Cara Loughran, Peter Wang, Jaime Guttenberg, Scott Beigel and Joaquin Oliver.
The injured victims include Marian Kabachenko, Stacy Lippel, Kyle Laman and Anthony Borges.
Tuesday’s hearing began with a back and forth between Peterson’s attorney, Mark Eiglarsh, and Judge Martin S. Fein after Eiglarsh said he wants to ask witnesses if they saw former Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel’s news conference, which Eiglarsh referenced in his opening statement.
During his opening statement, Eiglarsh said his client was the sacrificial lam thrown under the bus by a former ego-maniac of a sheriff, who after taking heat from a CNN town hall suddenly found someone to redirect the national outrage to.
“He did everything that he possibly could with the limited information that he had to help serve and protect everybody at that school,” Eiglarsh said during his opening statement.
Fein, however, told Eiglarsh to refrain from mentioning Israel during his opening statement. On Tuesday, he said Eiglarsh questioning witnesses about the sheriff was not relevant to the jury determining the facts of the case.
“You brought it up in opening, maybe at your own peril,” Fein said.
Fein said he didn’t believe Israel’s comments were relevant since he was not present at the Parkland school that day.
“If I can’t ask about Sheriff Israel for the fact that he had a plan to throw my client under the bus, OK? In this instance, I can say that he didn’t speak with my client, he didn’t know he had his personal cellphone -- that he then held a press conference after initially defending my client and other officers, and then he announced to the world that my client didn’t go in to kill the killer, erroneously suggesting that he knew where the killer was exactly,” Eiglarsh said.
“Your client is charged with these crimes -- this is his trial,” Fein later reminded Eiglarsh.
Testimony of Coral Springs police Capt. Edmond DeRosa
Once jurors entered the courtroom, they heard from Coral Springs police Capt. Edmond DeRosa, who told them about the actions he took while responding to multiple reports of shots being fired at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School.
“(I) cleared, searched building for stimulus or shooter,” he said.
“He (Peterson) did not enter the 1200 Building?” lead prosecutor Christopher Killoran asked.
“Not that I am aware of,” DeRosa responded.
Testimony of former campus security monitor Ana Ramos
And due to a scheduling issue, they also heard from defense witness Ana Ramos, a campus security monitor during the 2018 school shooting who told jurors that Peterson is the one who called in a Code Red -- an emergency notification to alert staff and students of imminent danger.
“I remember him calling into the radio, ‘Code Red, Code Red’ -- his voice was emotional, his voice was in shock, telling people ‘go back’ -- because this is serious,” she said.
“I saw him in Chris Hixon’s funeral and I approached him (Peterson) to say ‘thank you,’” Ramos added.
The Parkland shooter murdered Hixon as the unarmed athletic director raced into the 1200 Building.
Prosecutors allege that Peterson -- the armed campus school resource deputy -- failed to confront the shooter and failed to investigate the source of the gunshots.
The defense has maintained that Peterson wasn’t sure where the shots were precisely coming from and that there is a pronounced echo in the area around the 1200 Building.
Ramos acknowledged that the campus is large and that it would often be difficult to locate where a fight was coming from due to the echo.
“Did you move toward the sound to figure out what is going on?” Killoran asked.
“Yes,” she responded.
“Is it common sense to move?” he asked.
“Yes, because I need to identify where is the sound coming (from),” Ramos said.
During the state’s cross-examination, jurors also learned that Ramos heard Parkland murder victim Coach Aaron Feis on the radio that day.
“I heard him say ‘going to 1200 Building -- sound of a firecracker’ -- but then hear(ed) him say, ‘This doesn’t sound like firecracker -- sounds like something else.’”
“Aaron Feis was not armed that day, correct?” Killoran asked.
“Correct,” Ramos said.
“Was Chris Hixon armed?” Killoren asked.
“No,” Ramos said.
Peterson’s trial will resume on Thursday.
Testimony of Dr. Marlon Osbourne
Dr. Marlon Osbourne, the Palm Beach County associate medical examiner, talked about the autopsy he performed on Jaime Guttenberg, a 14-year-old student who was killed while trying to run away on the third floor.
He also testified during the penalty phase of the Parkland school shooter’s trial.
Meanwhile, another testy exchange occurred between the judge and Eiglarsh Tuesday, which led the judge to send a witness and the jury out of the courtroom.
After they were gone, Fein told Eiglarsh to refrain from asking hypothetical questions.
“This is going so far out of field of what is proper,” he said.
Their full exchange can be viewed below:
The trial is scheduled to resume at 9:15 a.m., on Thursday.