New 911 calls also released in Parkland shooting: 'They are all bleeding. They are going to die'
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The Coral Springs police officer who first arrived at the Parkland school massacre stayed in the parking lot as students inside were dying because he was given inaccurate information, according to radio tapes released Wednesday.
Officer Tim Burton told a dispatcher that Scot Peterson — the school resource officer with the Broward Sheriff's Office — was giving him his information at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14.
Burton said, "I'm with Douglas' SRO getting info," and said the shooter was last seen in a north parking lot by a three-story building. Burton is heard saying in the radio transmissions he has his rifle and is in the east part of the building in the parking lot.
Police say Nikolas Cruz shot and killed 17 people inside the school, and was able to escape the building by blending in among the students fleeing the Parkland school.
Police later found and arrested him.
According to a timeline of the shooting by the Broward Sheriff's Office, Peterson within minutes focused on the 1200 building, where the shooting happened. Peterson told others to "not approach the 12 or 1300 building" and to "stay at least 500 feet away at this point," the Sheriff's Office said.
Former Coral Springs Police Chief Tony Pustizzi, who retired from the department earlier this month, said Wednesday that his agency lost a few valuable minutes because of the misinformation.
"By not telling the (officers that) shots were fired from the building, he made it sound like the shooter was out of the school," Pustizzi said of Peterson. "Did he not know? He can hear the shots being fired."
Pustizzi said Burton "had his gun and he was ready to go but he didn't know where to go."
Peterson waited outside during the massacre when he should have gone into the building and engaged the shooter, Sheriff Scott Israel said at a news conference a week after the shooting.
Peterson has since resigned and retired. An attorney representing him said he believed the gunshots were coming from outside the buildings on campus.
Peterson said the initial report was of firecrackers, not gunshots, in the 1200 building, where the killer was shooting. When Peterson reached the building, he heard gunshots, but "believed that those gunshots were originating from outside of any of the buildings on the school campus," according to a statement from Peterson released by his lawyer last month.
As police raced to the high school, 911 dispatchers told officers they could hear the sound of the bullets flying.
"We can hear them in the background," a Coral Springs dispatcher said. "Our 911 lines are blowing up."
Burton, a school resource officer at Eagle Ridge Elementary School, gave his account of what happened during a news conference last month.
Burton said he heard the call about an active shooter at Stoneman Douglas and raced over, and a school security officer picked him up on a golf cart and gave him Cruz's description and where the shooting was taking place.
Two minutes after Cruz entered the school, Peterson is seen on surveillance video near the southeast corner of 1200 building, the Sheriff's Office said.
Burton ran to the 1200 building, and took his position behind a tree and black SUV, scanning for the shooter in the parking lot.
Peterson told Burton that the shooter could be outside, warning, "Watch out behind you, you could be in a bad position," Pustizzi said.
That left Burton with uncertainty about where he should be, especially because the shooting has already stopped, Pustizzi said. The campus was eerily quiet, because students were hunkered down, he said.
"He just didn't know where to go," Pustizzi said.
Four other Coral Springs officers show up and enter the building. Burton joins them and helps rescue wounded students, including a girl shot in the knee, he said.
Officers on scene had to deal with other issues that may have caused delays.
They were given incorrect information about where the shooter was because officers looking at school security footage didn't realize, or didn't tell their colleagues, that the video they were watching was recorded and not live.
The "communication failure" led police to believe they were tracking the shooter in real time, when in fact they were seeing footage from 20 minutes earlier, Pustizzi said after the shooting.
The first two agencies on scene — Coral Springs and the Sheriff's Office — also have two separate systems for 911 calls and police radios. The county's police radio system, used by the Sheriff's Office, crashed at times during the response.
The radio problems left some law enforcement officers unable to communicate and hear from dispatchers on the county system. They included Broward Sheriff's Office Capt. Jan Jordan, who commands the Parkland district for the agency. She was sometimes not able to hear what was coming over the radios.
It also forced officers to at times ditch their radios, use hand signals and stay in groups to relay information to each other.
"We're kind of running two separate operations," an officer says on the radio transmissions released Wednesday.
More 911 recordings released
Recordings of the anxious, heartbreaking moments between dispatchers and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School's students and teachers were released Wednesday, providing one of the most comprehensive accounts yet on what happened that day.
A student in Room 1216 tells the dispatcher that they're in the freshmen building. She describes what she sees.
"There's holes in the wall," the student says. "There are a lot of people around us who are injured, people are bleeding."
She says where the shooter is, based on the gunfire.
"Please, he's upstairs now," she says. "Please, oh my God."
Earlier in her phone call, the student reported three classmates were shot in her classroom at 2:22 p.m.
"Stoneman Douglas High School. There's a shooting at a school. Please, please, please. Please hurry."
"Do not hang up the phone," the Coral Springs dispatcher says. The girl whimpers.
Coral Springs city officials released many of the frantic calls, exactly one month after the Feb. 14 shooting at the Parkland school.
Between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., Coral Springs received 115 calls to 911 from students, teachers and their parents.
Calls made to 911 on cellphones from within Parkland are dispatched to Coral Springs operators because most of the calls for help are for medical emergencies and Coral Springs paramedics contract in Parkland.
"If you look at the hierarchy of needs, there are more fire calls in Parkland than there are police calls," said retired Coral Springs Police Chief Tony Pustizzi, whose police officers were first on scene. "Let's face it: It's Parkland. It's a very safe city."
"Please, please, there are people here. They are all bleeding. They are going to die," the student in Room 1216 tells the dispatcher.
She whispers to someone in her class. "Is he dead, is he dead?"
"There's a kid, I think he's dead," she cries to the dispatcher.
"Stay on the phone," the dispatcher says. "We have lots of help on the way, OK?"
"Please, he's dead."
The girl says she is willing to try CPR. But she's in hiding, and her teacher tells her not to move.
The dispatcher urges her to climb into a closet to hide but the closets are on the other side of the room.
"Make sure nobody in your class moves an inch, got it?"
"He's got blood dripping down his arms," she says as the girl tries to explain her "neighbor" is among the wounded.
Then "is he still breathing?" asks the dispatcher.
"I don't know, I can't tell," the student replies.
There's panic heard over the line as someone is heard nearing the room.
"They're coming in! They're coming in!" she cries.
The dispatcher asked who's approaching.
"The police or the shooter?"
It was the police, the student realized.
The student wails as she sees some classmates.
"Oh my God, they're dead," she said.
In that same classroom, 1216, everyone dropped to the floor.
As a schoolteacher's 911 call goes through to the dispatcher, she whispers urgently to her students.
She wants them to stay safe, crouching down under her desk in the corner of the classroom.
"Please stay down, please stay down," she says. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God."
She repeatedly says, "Just stay down."
She urges the dispatcher to send help.
"There's gunshots," she says. "Please come."
The dispatcher asks, "Have you guys gotten training for active shooter?"
"Um, no, not really," the teacher replies.
She said the door was locked but a male student was shot.
The teacher speaks in a low, urgent voice, repeatedly saying that "it" went through the door.
The dispatcher clarifies, "the bullet went through the door?"
"Yes, I have a student down," the teacher says. "I have a student down."
The wounded student isn't breathing.
"It happened so fast," she says.
Inside the classroom, they could not see the gunman.
The teacher said she thought she had about 24 students hiding in the corner of the classroom with her. "With the one student down, it's 25."
As the dispatcher keeps trying to keep her calm, the teacher again whispers forcefully to her students.
"Stay down. Stay down. Oh my God."
The dispatcher asks about the wounded student, who is leaned over his desk.
"There's blood all over," the teacher tells her. "He got shot in the chest."
"There's smoke all in my room. My window and my door is shot in."
About 4 minutes and 45 seconds into the call, the teacher can be overheard asking another student: "Are you hit?"
"I have another student hit," the teacher tells the dispatcher.
The calls continued: "They were shooting into my classroom," a girl from Room 1214 tells a dispatcher that someone in the classroom has blood on their face. "He shot the window in."
"I have a class full of students," calls a teacher for help on another call.
"A lot of blood, please help," a girl cries. "Please, it's real. Please help," she cries.
Then the line goes dead.