Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Parkland Father Files Lawsuit Against ‘Coward’ Security Guard

The father of Meadow Pollack, the 18-year-old who was killed in the February 14 Parkland shooting, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the high school security officer who stayed inside while the mass murder of 17 students and teachers occurred, NBC News reported.

In his lawsuit filed Monday in Broward Circuit Court, Andrew Pollack named Scot Peterson, the armed sheriff’s deputy assigned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, as a defendant.

“I want to expose that coward so bad,” Pollack tweeted of Peterson. “Where ever he goes I want people to recognize him and say that’s one of the cowards of Broward.”

A week after the rampage, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel reportedly confirmed that Peterson was armed outside the school and never entered. Peterson resigned soon after.

Pollack reportedly also named the 19-year-old suspect Nikolas Cruz, the estate of his late mother, the family who cared for Cruz after his mother died, and mental health agencies in his lawsuit.

The suit asked for unspecified damages. “This has nothing to do with money,” Pollack tweeted.

Contact Haley Cohen at [email protected]

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.