The trial of a Texas police officer charged in the halting law enforcement response to the attack on Robb Elementary heads into a second week Monday with prosecutors continuing to press their case that he did nothing in the early moments to stop the gunman.
Adrian Gonzales, 52, a former Uvalde schools police officer, was among the first officers to arrive on the scene as the gunman approached the school. Gonzales has pleaded not guilty to 29 counts of child abandonment or endangerment.
The May 24, 2022, attack is one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history. It left 19 students and two teachers dead.
The opening days of the trial included dramatic replays of the initial emergency calls, testimony from teachers who huddled with terrified students, and the mother of one of the victims recounting how her daughter had asked to leave school early that day.
Trial focused on a single officer, not the larger police response
Gonzales was among the first of more than 370 federal, state, and local officers to arrive at the school. It would take more than an hour for a tactical team to go into a classroom and kill 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos.
The trial is tightly focused on Gonzales’ actions. Prosecutors allege he abandoned his active shooter training and did not try to engage or distract the gunman outside the school. They said he failed again minutes later when a group of officers went inside the school only to retreat when they came under heavy gunfire.
Prosecutors noted how students made 911 calls from inside the classroom with the gunman.
“When a child calls 911, we have a right to expect a response,” special prosecutor Bill Turner said in opening statements.
Gonzales’ attorneys said he never saw the gunman outside the school. They also said Gonzales helped students evacuate from other classrooms and noted how the gunman was able to quickly get inside through an unlocked door.
A mother, teachers, and photos recount the terror of the day
Jennifer Garcia told jurors her 9-year-old daughter Eliahna asked to leave school early after an awards program. The family had already given her teacher a little bit of money to pitch in for a class pizza and movie party.
“She wanted to come home,” Garcia said, fighting back tears. “I told her, ‘No ... stay at school.’”
The family was among the last to learn that night that their daughter had died.
Several Robb teachers and a staff member described the terror of seeing the gunman approach and hearing the booming staccato of gunfire. They described following their training for active shooter situations: locking classroom doors, turning out the lights, and keeping the children quiet.
Jurors also saw photos from the classrooms that showed large amounts of blood and the dead gunman. A medical examiner described the wounds to the children, noting several were shot at least a dozen times.
Tracing a trail of bullets outside the school
Prosecutors focused heavily on a trail of bullets and shell casings left as the gunman fired his rifle outside the school. They hope to show the jury that Gonzales should have been close enough to the gunman to see him shooting and confront him in the early moments.
The trial is a rare case in which a police officer could be convicted of allegedly failing to act to stop a crime and protect lives. Gonzales and former Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo are the only two responding officers that day to face charges. Arredondo’s trial has not yet been set.
Prosecutors likely will face a high bar to win a conviction. A Florida sheriff’s deputy was acquitted by a jury after being charged with failing to confront the shooter in the Parkland, Florida, school massacre in 2018 — the first such prosecution in the U.S. for an on-campus shooting.
