Fla. school guard was punished for harassment
One of the victims died in Parkland massacre
PARKLAND, Fla. — An unarmed security monitor who critics say could have stopped the Florida high school massacre was suspended last year for sexually harassing two female students, with one of them later dying in February’s shooting, her family said Thursday.
The father and brother of Meadow Pollack say she was one of two girls Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School security monitor Andrew Medina harassed last year. Medina was suspended for three days, though a disciplinary panel recommended he be fired, a newspaper reported Thursday.
Andrew Pollack and his 20-yearold son, Hunter, said they didn’t learn until after the Feb. 14 shooting, which left 17 dead, that Meadow and her mother had reported Medina, now 39, to Stoneman Douglas officials. Andrew Pollack said his ex-wife didn’t tell them “because she knew I would have handled it.” “I wouldn’t have just let it go.” “Every day more incompetence gets exposed,” said Andrew Pollack, a critic of how Broward County school officials and sheriff ’s deputies dealt with suspect Nikolas Cruz before the shooting. Medina “should have been fired a long time ago.”
Medina did not return a call seeking comment. The school district said in a statement late Thursday that Medina was suspended because he denied the allegations, had no previous disciplinary record and “there was no direct evidence to distinguish between the conflicting statements provided by the student and the employee.”
According to records obtained by the South Florida Sunsentinel, Medina, who is also an assistant baseball coach, asked one girl to go on a date and another said he made lewd comments to her and said he wanted to visit her at work. Broward County Schools investigators say one of the students’ stories was corroborated by surveillance video of Medina approaching her in a hallway on Feb. 16, 2017.
According to Andrew and Hunter Pollack, Meadow was one of the girls. They said Medina would call Meadow, then 17, making her uncomfortable. They said that when her boyfriend confronted Medina, Medina threatened him. Meadow and her mother then reported Medina, they said.
Medina told detectives investigating the shooting that he spotted Cruz entering the school grounds carrying a bag and recognized him as a troubled former student who could be dangerous.
But Medina didn’t confront Cruz, nor did he call a “Code Red,” which would have triggered a lockdown of classrooms and brought police to the school, because he said he didn’t see a gun. He radioed another unarmed security monitor, who hid in a closet when the shooting began.
Medina still works for the district but not at Stoneman Douglas.