PARKLAND, FLA. (WSVN) - More than two months ago, Andrew Pollack lost his daughter in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Now he is taking legal action to address what he describes as a system-wide failure.
Pollack sat down with 7News Tuesday afternoon, one day after he filed a wrongful death lawsuit that names several defenders, including confessed gunman Nikolas Cruz and former Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputy Scot Peterson, the school resource officer who was criticized for not going into the building where the shooting took place.
Pollack said his daughter Meadow would have wanted him to fight. “She’s telling me, ‘Daddy, you fight for me. You don’t quit,'” he said. “She’s helping me through this, and she’s telling me, ‘Daddy, go after these people. Go after these people that had this incompetence that led to me getting murdered that day.'”
The grieving father did not mince words when referring to Peterson. “He should start looking for another country to move to, because he’s not going to find a spot in this country where no one is not going to point a finger at him and recognize him for the coward he was,” he said.
Pollack’s attorney, David Brill, said Peterson’s decision not to confront Cruz is conduct unbecoming of a law enforcement officer in several ways. “He’s failed on a whole different level, because these are people he’s supposed, he’s supposed to love,” he said. “It takes cowardice to a whole new plane.”
Pollack’s suit reads, “Scot Peterson cowered in his safe location between two concrete walls outside of Building 12 the entire time Nikolas Cruz trained his AR-15 and rained bullets upon the teachers and students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.”
“He retreated back while he was still on the first floor, so we all know from the dot video that I had to watch at the commission meeting, where my daughter was a dot, and this guy walked down the second floor,” said a visibly shaken Pollack. “If Peterson would have just gone up, he’d have a clear shot.”
The suit spells out in graphic detail the last moments in Meadow’s life. It reads, “Meadow Pollack crawled down the hallway to another student, a freshman. Meadow Pollack then laid her bullet-riddled body on top of the other student, who had not yet been shot, in an attempt to protect the freshman. Nikolas Cruz was unrelenting in his savagery. He pointed his assault rifle at Meadow Pollack’s back and shot into it repeatedly. The bullets pierced through Meadow Pollack’s back and into the child beneath her, killing both students. In a final act of barbarity, Nikolas Cruz shot Meadow Pollack in the head.”
“It’s nothing but incompetence that should have been avoided, and that’s what angers me, that my daughter had to get murdered that way,” said Pollack.
Pollack indicated the lawsuit is not about money but about justice, as well as finding a voice for his daughter.
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