Former Parkland students sue school and county officials, alleging they knew the gunman was a threat and could have stopped the 2018 massacre

• Several victims of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the gunman and other local officials.
• The victims say they suffered "extreme mental anguish and associated psychological trauma."

A handful of former students from Parkland, Florida, and one parent, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against a number of school and local officials that alleges their negligence caused the deadly 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

A gunman killed 17 students and staff members, and injured 17 others, on February 14, 2018. Four former students, named in the lawsuit as Tyjanai Thomas, Johnathan Rivera, Tykima Hoggen, and Julian Benavides, alleged that they suffered "extreme mental anguish and associated psychological trauma" as a result of the shooting.

Among the defendants named by the students were the shooter, Nikolas Cruz; the Broward County School Board; the Broward County Sheriff's Office; Henderson Behavioral Health; and Scot Peterson, the disgraced school resource officer who was criminally charged after failing to confront Cruz during the shooting.

Cruz pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted first-degree murder. He apologized to his victims and their families in court, saying he must live with his actions "every day," and is now facing a death penalty trial.

But the students' January 5 lawsuit singled out Peterson in particular, noting that "there was only one person on the Marjory Stonemason Douglas High School campus on February 14, 2018, starting at 2:19 p.m. who could have stopped Nikolas Cruz."

The lawsuit continued: "Unfortunately for the teachers and students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, that one person was Scot Peterson."

The lawsuit outlined a litany of Peterson's alleged failures, accusing him of failing to properly investigate tips about Cruz before the shooting, failing to share any information with other authorities, and later cowering in a "safe location" while Cruz massacred students and staff, and ordering other officers to stay away when they arrived.

"Scot Peterson remained safe in his position away from Nikolas Cruz, never once attempting to go inside Building 12 where the School Resource Officer knew the shooting was taking place, never once attempting to save a life, never once attempting to fire a single bullet at Nikolas Cruz," the lawsuit alleged.

Mark Eiglarsh, an attorney representing Peterson, told Insider in a statement that his client was "innocent of any criminal wrongdoing, and did all he could to save lives during Nikolas Cruz's abhorrent massacre."

Eiglarsh continued: "The public has been fed a false narrative about Scot Peterson. We have overwhelming evidence proving that my client didn't know precisely where the shooter was during the attack and also, of the numerous actions that my client took during the attack to save lives."

The lawsuit also accused the school board of documenting nearly 55 different incidents involving Cruz in its disciplinary referral system, and failing to take appropriate actions against him.

The lawsuit alleged that the school board "was aware, or should have been aware, of the numerous acts of violence or threats of violence exhibited by Cruz," including his "fascination firearms and/or other weapons capable of inflicting serious bodily injury or death."

Henderson Behavioral Health, a Florida nonprofit providing mental health services, also came under scrutiny in the lawsuit, which alleged that Henderson previously "provided treatment to Cruz which exacerbated and fueled his depression, and substantially contributed to causing his violent tendencies and behavior."

A previous lawsuit against Henderson Behavioral Health from a Parkland victim's parents was thrown out in 2020, after a panel of judges ruled that a criminal attack from a patient was "not in the foreseeable zone of risk created by the mental health provider."

Representatives for the defendants did not immediately respond Friday to Insider's requests for comment.

The lawsuit comes a little more than a month after the families of more than a dozen victims reached a $130 million settlement with the Justice Department. The families had accused the FBI of negligence in failing to act on numerous tips about Cruz, his violent outbursts, his cache of guns, and his threats to shoot up a school.