Houston (AFP) – A US jury on Wednesday acquitted the former school police officer for his response to a 2022 mass shooting at a Texas elementary school which killed 21 people, including 19 children, to the frustration of the victims’ families. Adrian Gonzales, 52, was accused of failing to “engage, distract or delay the shooter,” and faced 29 felony counts of child endangerment—one for each of the 19 children who died and for the 10 students who survived. The jury took several hours to deliberate.
“In each of the 29 counts, we the jury find the defendant, Adrian Gonzales, not guilty,” Judge Sid Harle said as he read the verdict in a Corpus Christi courthouse, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Uvalde, where the shooting took place. Nineteen young children and two teachers were killed in the city of Uvalde on May 24, 2022, when a teenage gunman went on a rampage with an AR-15 style assault rifle at Robb Elementary School, marking America’s deadliest school shooting in a decade. The official response by law enforcement was heavily criticized after it emerged that more than a dozen officers waited for over an hour outside classrooms where the shooting was taking place and did nothing as children lay dead or dying inside.
Family members voiced frustration at the decision, which followed an uncommon attempt to hold law enforcement accountable for their response to a mass shooting. “They failed the children again,” Javier Cazares, the father of Jackie Cazares who was killed in the attack, told the press. “I’ve been emotionally shattered since day one, but again, we had to brace for the worst.” A total of 376 officers—border guards, state police, city police, local sheriff departments, and elite forces—responded to the massacre, a Texas state lawmakers’ report said in July 2022.
After the verdict was read, Gonzales thanked God and his attorneys, who insisted he did risk his life. The shooter, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was reportedly killed by law enforcement at the site of the attack. Former school district police chief Pete Arredondo also faces charges over the tragedy, but will be tried separately and has pleaded not guilty to the charges he faces.
© 2024 AFP
