Former Uvalde officer acquitted over police response to Robb Elementary shooting | Texas

A former Uvalde schools police officer was acquitted Wednesday of charges that he failed to confront the Robb Elementary School shooter during the critical first minutes of one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

Jurors deliberated for more than seven hours before finding Adrian Gonzales, 52, not guilty in the first trial for law enforcement’s faltering response to the 2022 attack, in which a teenage gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers. If convicted, he faced two years in prison on more than two dozen charges of child abandonment and endangerment.

Gonzales appeared to choke back tears and hugged his attorneys after the verdict was read in a courtroom in Corpus Christi, hundreds of miles from Uvalde, where his legal team said a fair trial would not have been possible.

“Thank you to the jury for considering all the evidence,” Gonzales told reporters. When asked if he wanted to say anything to the families, he declined.

Several members of the victims’ families sat silently in the courtroom, some crying or wiping away tears.

“Faith is broken, but you never lose it,” said Jesse Rizo, whose 9-year-old niece, Jackie Cazares, was killed. He said he was frustrated by the verdict and hopes the state will move forward with the trial of former Uvalde Schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo, the only other officer charged over the police response.

“These children in the cemetery cannot speak for themselves,” Rizo said.

The jurors refused to speak to reporters as they left.

Arredondo’s trial has not yet been set. Paul Looney, his lawyer, told The Associated Press that he believed Wednesday’s verdict would result in prosecutors dropping charges against his client. “These people were vilified and it’s horrible what was done to them. These guys didn’t do anything wrong,” Looney said.

The trial, which lasted nearly three weeks, was an unusual case in the United States in which an officer faced criminal charges for failing to stop a crime and protect lives.

The proceedings included moving testimonies from teachers who were shot and survived. Prosecutors argued that Gonzales abandoned his training and did nothing to stop or interrupt the armed teen before he entered the school.

“We’re supposed to act differently when we’re talking about a child who can’t defend himself,” special prosecutor Bill Turner said during closing arguments Wednesday. “If you have a duty to act, you cannot stand idly by while a child is in imminent danger.”

At least 370 law enforcement officers rushed to the school, where 77 minutes passed before a tactical team finally entered the classroom to confront and kill the shooter. Gonzales was one of two officers charged, angering some of the victims’ relatives who said they wanted others to be held accountable.

Gonzales was charged with 29 counts of child abandonment and endangerment – ​​each count accounting for the 19 students killed and 10 others injured.

During the trial, jurors heard a medical examiner describe the children’s fatal injuries, some of whom were shot more than a dozen times. Several parents described sending their children to school for an awards ceremony and the panic that followed when the attack unfolded.

Gonzales’ attorneys said he arrived to a chaotic scene of gunfire echoing through the school grounds and never saw the shooter before the attacker entered the school. They also insisted that three other officers who arrived seconds later had a better chance of stopping the shooter.

“He was the lowest man on the totem pole. They thought he was easy prey,” Nico LaHood, one of Gonzales’ lawyers, said of prosecutors after the acquittal.

The families of some victims traveled a long way to attend Gonzales’ trial. Early on, the sister of one of the slain teachers was removed from the courtroom after an angry outburst following an officer’s testimony.

Gonzales’ trial focused narrowly on his actions in the opening moments of the attack, but prosecutors also presented the graphic and emotional testimony as the result of police failures.

State and federal reviews of the shooting have cited cascading problems in law enforcement training, communication, leadership and technology, and questioned why officers waited so long.