Judge sets date for Parkland school shooting re-enactment in Scot Peterson civil lawuit
FORT LAUDERDALE - A judge has decided that a re-enactment of the Parkland massacre inside the 12-hundred building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will take place on August 4th.
The decision was made Thursday in a hearing in the civil lawsuit brought against former school resource officer Scot Peterson.
The reenactment, which will be recorded, will parallel the movements of the shooter inside the 1200 building back in 2018. The purpose, according to a motion filed with the court, would be to prove that Peterson knew where the more than 70 gunshots were coming from and failed to act during the 2018 Valentine's Day shooting.
Peterson was recently acquitted in a criminal trial where he faced child neglect charges. Peterson has claimed on that day, he didn't know where the gunfire was coming from.
However, the parents of four of the victims say there is evidence he knew where they were coming from and the best way they feel to prove that is to demonstrate what happened.
The motion said the simulation will include the same types of weapons the gunman used. Originally it was said that blanks would be used. At Thursday hearing, the judge was tole that live ammunition will be used with a bullet safety device. A ballistics expert for the families, former FBI agent Bruce Koenig, testified that live rounds make a different sound than blanks.
Family attorney David Brill said the live rounds would be fired into a ballistic bullet trap that is commonly used at gun ranges and by law enforcement labs to catch the ammunition safely.
"It is in fact perfectly safe and controlled," Brill said.
Families of the victims and survivors have already settled with the Broward school district but still have pending civil cases, including against the Broward Sheriff's Office.
Now that the criminal trials related to the shooting have ended, the 1200 building is set to be handed back to the school district to be demolished. For the last few weeks, families of victims and survivors have been about to tour the hallways to see firsthand what it looks like five years after a gunman killed 17 people and wounded 17 others. The walls remain blood-stained, shattered glass litters the floors, and the building virtually untouched since that day.