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By Beth Stibal |

Broward judge: School district NOT obligated to warn parents about Parkland school shooter

Parkland school shooting, School shooting
FILE- In this Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018, file photo, parents wait for news of their loved ones after a former student opened fire killing several students and three staff members, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The latest mass shooting at the Florida high school has some pondering the improbable: Could this one actually bring some measure of change? (AP Photo/Joel Auerbach, File)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Parents are horrified after a judge ruled Monday that the Broward School district had no “duty” to warn them about school shooter Nikolas Cruz.

According to the order, issued three years after nearly three years after the school shooting that killed 17, Judge Patti Englander Henning said that the district can’t be liable for failing to predict what Cruz could have done in the future.

“The District had no control over Cruz. They did not have custody over him. He was not a student in the system and had not been for over a year,” the order reads.

The ruling also states that the “Court understands and sympathizes with the community as we still three years after the horrific tragedy, attempt to make sense of it.
The Plaintiffs search for identifiable sources to blame beyond the shooter himself. There are certainly issues remaining for which the School Board may be held liable.”

“We’re horrified,” said Royer Borges, one of the plaintiffs in the case. His son, Anthony, was badly wounded in the February 2018 shooting.

“Now to just say that it’s okay to put a killer next to my son, and they didn’t have to tell me, that’s really really scary,” he said.

Attorney David Brill, who represents other plaintiffs, including the Pollack, Hoyer, and Petty families said, “We’ve never alleged that somehow the school district has to have a little crystal ball. We’re talking about a duty to warn for the potential for harm.”

In September, the Florida Supreme Court determined that the school district was allowed to treat the shooting as a single incident and capped total liability at $300,000 to be split among all the victims who filed suit. Any award above that amount would have to be approved by a claims bill passed by the state legislature.