A police officer is being prosecuted in connection with a shooting in Uvalde, Texas
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A former Uvalde, Texas, school police officer who was part of the slow-moving law enforcement response to one of the worst mass shootings in American history went on trial Monday on charges of failing to protect children from gun violence.
Adrian Gonzales, one of the first officers to respond to the 2022 attack, is facing 29 counts of child abandonment or endangerment in a rare prosecution of a police officer accused of not doing more to save lives. Authorities waited more than an hour to deal with the teenage shooter who killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary.
Gonzales pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer said the police officer tried to save the children that day.
Jury selection began Monday at a Texas courthouse where a long line of prospective jurors stretched outside the building before the trial began.
Potential jurors were given a questionnaire asking what they knew about law enforcement’s response and their thoughts on what happened, as well as whether they donated money to the Uvalde victims.
It took the police 77 minutes to enter the school
Judge Sid Harle told several hundred potential jurors that the court was not looking for jurors who knew nothing about the shooting but for those who were impartial. The trial was expected to last two weeks, he said.
Among the potential witnesses are FBI agents, Texas Department of Public Safety rangers, school staff and family members of the victims.
About 400 officers from federal, local and state law enforcement agencies responded to the school, but it took 77 minutes from the time authorities arrived until a tactical team breached the classroom and killed the shooter, Salvador Ramos. An investigation later revealed that Ramos had been predisposed to violence and infamy in the months leading up to the attack.
Gonzales and former Uvalde school police chief Pete Arredondo were among the first on the scene, and are the only officers facing criminal charges in connection with the response. Arredondo’s trial has not been scheduled.
The charges against Gonzales carry two years in prison if convicted.
Police and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott initially said that quick law enforcement killed Ramos and saved lives. But that version quickly took a backseat as families described pleading with police to enter the building and 911 calls from students pleading for help.
The lawsuit alleges that Gonzales placed the children in “imminent danger” of injury or death by failing to engage, distract or delay the shooter and by not following his active shooter training. The allegations also say that he did not go forward to where the gun was fired even though he heard the gun fire and was told where the shooter was.
The release of a new surveillance video showing the inaction of the police as 19 children and two teachers died in a shooting incident at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The police response to the massacre has been widely criticized and is currently under investigation.
A state and federal review of the shooting revealed ongoing problems in law enforcement training, communication, leadership and technology, and questioned why officials waited so long.
According to the state report, Gonzales told investigators that when the police noticed that there were students still sitting in other classes, he helped get them out of the school.
Some family members of the victims said more charges should be laid.
“They all waited and let the children and teachers die,” said Velma Lisa Duran, sister of Irma Garcia, one of the two teachers killed.
Prosecutors will likely face a high bar to win a conviction. Judges are often reluctant to convict law enforcement officers of inaction, as seen after the Parkland, Fla., school shooting in 2018.
Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Peterson has been charged with failing to confront the shooter in that attack. It was the first such prosecution in the US for a campus shooting, and Peterson was acquitted by a jury in 2023.
At the request of Gonzales’ lawyers, the case was moved 320 kilometers southeast to Corpus Christi. They argued that Gonzales could not find a suitable case in Uvalde, and prosecutors did not.
Uvalde, a town of 15,000 people, still has several outstanding monuments to the shooting. Robb Elementary is closed but still standing, and a memorial of 21 crosses and flowers sits next to the school’s sign. Murals depicting several victims can still be seen on the walls of several buildings.
Jesse Rizo, whose 9-year-old niece Jackie was one of the students who were killed, said that even though it is a three-hour drive to Corpus Christi, the family would like someone to attend the case every day.
“It is important for the judges to see that Jackie had a big, strong family,” said Rizo.
