First Parkland 911 calls show more confusion

FORT LAUDERDALE – On the phone, gunfire pops in the background, then a girl’s voice says: “Hello, we’re at Stoneman Douglas High School, and I think there’s a shooter.”

Three more shots follow before the line goes silent.

The 911 call, obtained Monday by the South Florida Sun Sentinel, was the first after the Parkland school shootings. Within 27 seconds of the call, a Coral Springs emergency dispatcher relayed the information to the Broward Sheriff’s Office, which patrols Parkland.

The caller did not identify the specific location, but Coral Springs told the Sheriff’s Office less than two minutes later that another caller reported “someone was shot in the 1200 building.” That was just three minutes after gunman Nikolas Cruz had entered the school Feb. 14. He remained inside for at least three more minutes as he killed 17 people and wounded 17 more.

The audio provided by the Coral Springs Fire Department raises questions about how quickly and adroitly the county relayed crucial details about the crisis to its deputies, and shows

the limitations of the fragmented regional emergency dispatch system during a major disaster.

The sheriff ’s deputy who worked on campus, Scot Peterson, admitted hearing gunfire but took cover outside and never ran inside the building to catch or kill the killer. He said he could not pinpoint where the gunfire was coming from — whether there was a sniper or a shooter outside the school.

The audio proves that the Sheriff’s Office knew early on exactly where people were being shot.

The office receives landline emergency calls from Parkland, but cellphone calls go to the Coral Springs Police Department and have to be transferred or relayed to the Sheriff ’s Office, which operates the county’s 911 dispatch system.

The audio shows that one sheriff’s operator appeared to not know what city Marjory Stoneman Douglas High was in. And many minutes into the crisis, another county dispatcher seemed not to know which school was at issue.

“I just got a call from Douglas High School, um a female on the line who said she believes there’s a shooter at the school,” Coral Springs emergency dispatch supervisor Patrick Thurman told the Sheriff’s Office.

“Ok at Douglas High School? In what city?” the sheriff ’s operator asks.

“In Parkland,” Thurman says.

Asked if he got “secondhand” information, Thurman calmly tells the dispatcher that a female called 911 and “it sounded like possible shots in the background.”

“I think I heard five or six in two different bursts,” he said, signaling the gravity of the situation.

“And you’re calling from where?” the Sheriff ’s Office asks.

“I’m from Coral Springs,” he replied, as precious seconds ticked away. Thurman provided the address of the school.

“Ok, let me see if they’re working anything there,” the county dispatcher said.

Coral Springs years ago declined to participate in Broward’s regional 911 emergency system, preferring to retain local control over the training of its dispatchers, the handling of calls and its equipment. City officials say the smaller geographic footprint means its staff is more familiar with streets and landmarks in Coral Springs and neighboring Parkland and can be directed to scenes without hesitation.

The system serves the city well in normal day-today operations but presented coordination challenges across jurisdictions during the massive crisis.

About a minute after Coral Springs told the Sheriff’s Office about the victim inside the 1200 building, a deputy radioed that he heard shots by the football field.

At the time, Cruz was still inside the 1200 building, according to a timeline from the Sheriff ’s Office.

The Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

A lawyer for Peterson, Michael Ross Piper of Fort Lauderdale, said the specifics of what occurred are “still a matter of great speculation among everyone.”

Peterson, who was suspended and resigned, is being sued by the father of one of the dead girls. Piper said he will “not litigate the facts of the case in the media.”

The girl on the audio who first called 911 is not identified and it’s unclear whether she survived. The Coral Springs 911 operator can be heard saying they could trace the call only to a cellular tower near the school.

Peterson told NBC’s Today Show this month that Broward County’s dispatchers were giving him “no real-time intelligence whatsoever” about a shooter “inside the building or even at the school.”

A summary of radio transmissions released by the Sheriff ’s Office does not show Broward regional communications advising Peterson or other deputies early on of a victim inside the 1200 building.

In releasing the audio to the Sun Sentinel, Coral Springs officials aim to dispel any notion that they were slow to advise the Sheriff ’s Office about the incident or withheld any specifics about the location of the shooting.

If information was not given to Peterson, it had nothing to do with Coral Springs’ emergency communications center, city officials told the Sun Sentinel.

“We were being told the 1200 building,” Coral Springs spokeswoman Lynne Martzall said. “That’s not information we withheld from any entity.”

Cruz began firing at 2:21 p.m., according to the Sheriff ’s Office.

At 2:24 p.m., the Coral Springs operator advised the Sheriff’s Office that “someone was shot in the 1200 building.”

About the same time, Peterson was on the radio saying: “We’re talking about the 1200 building, it’s going to be the building off Holmberg Road,” and there “appears to be shots fired.”

Nearly two minutes later, Peterson said on the radio: “We also heard it’s by, inside the 1200 building.”

Still he did not go in to try to stop the carnage.