The now former Broward Sheriff's Office deputy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High at the time of the 2018 campus massacre will not make a deal with prosecutors.
Scot Peterson is planning to plead not guilty to charges of Child Neglect for not going in and directly confronting the shooter.
"If you knew that Nikolas Cruz was in the building and you believed that there was an active shooter in there, damn right we're there to protect everybody," says Peterson.
The now former deputy maintains at the moment, he and many other people didn't know from where the gunfire was coming. He thought it was outside, so he took a tactical position.
"There is no way in hell that I would sit there and allow those kids to die with me being next to another building and sitting there. No way."
When other officers arrived, they too, were at a loss.
Peterson adds, "We were doing the best. Every deputy on the scene was doing the best that we could at that moment in the chaotic moments at the beginning with those shots being fired."
Then BSO Sheriff Scott Israel, in a deposition taken in August, said the failure of Coral Springs and BSO radios to overlap helped make the situation worse.