More than 16 months after the deadliest high school shooting in the nation’s history, two more sheriff’s deputies have been fired for neglect of duty.
Broward County Sheriff’s Office Deputies Edward Eason and Josh Stambaugh were dismissed Wednesday for failing to properly respond to the shooting that killed 17 students and staff and injured 17 more, according to the Miami Herald. The two were dismissed after the agency completed its own internal affairs investigation into officers’ response to the shooting.
The firings come amid a flurry of backlash over how law enforcement handled the massacre.
This month, a former school resource officer, Scot Peterson, 56, was arrested for child neglect and culpable negligence for failing to intervene in the shooting despite allegedly hearing gunshots coming from the building. He was roundly criticized and dubbed the “Coward of Broward” by some.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, issued an executive order in January that suspended then-Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel. Israel was accused of overseeing a department that bungled not just the Parkland shooting, but also the 2017 shooting at Fort Lauderdale Airport. When DeSantis issued the executive order suspending Israel, he said the sheriff was being suspended because of “repeated failures, incompetence, and neglect of duty.”
