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A former school police officer in Uvalde, Texas, who was part of the slow law enforcement response to one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history went on trial Monday on charges that he failed to protect children from the gunman.
Adrian Gonzales, one of the first officers to respond to the 2022 attack, is charged with 29 counts of child abandonment or endangerment in a rare prosecution of an officer accused of not doing more to save lives. Authorities waited more than an hour to confront the teenage shooter who killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary.
Gonzales has pleaded not guilty, and his attorney has said the officer tried to save children that day.
Jury selection began Monday at a Texas courthouse where a long line of prospective jurors stretched outside the building before the proceedings got underway.
Potential jurors were given a list of questions asking what they knew about the law enforcement response and their impressions of what happened, as well as whether they contributed money to Uvalde victims.
Officers took 77 minutes to enter school
Judge Sid Harle told several hundred potential jurors that the court was not looking for jurors who know nothing about the shooting but wants those who can be impartial. The trial was expected to last about two weeks, he said.
Among the potential witnesses are FBI agents, rangers with the Texas Department of Public Safety, school employees and family members of the victims.
Nearly 400 officers from state, local and federal law enforcement agencies responded to the school, but 77 minutes passed from the time authorities arrived until a tactical team breached the classroom and killed the shooter, Salvador Ramos. An investigation later showed that Ramos was obsessed with violence and notoriety in the months leading up to the attack.
Gonzales and former Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo were among the first on the scene, and they are the only two officers to face criminal charges over the response. Arredondo’s trial has not been scheduled.
The charges against Gonzales carry up to two years in prison if he is convicted.
Police and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott initially said swift law enforcement action killed Ramos and saved lives. But that version quickly unravelled as families described begging police to go into the building and 911 calls emerged from students pleading for help.
The indictment alleges Gonzales placed 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 he did not advance toward the gunfire despite hearing shots and being told where the shooter was.
The release of a new surveillance video shows police inaction as 19 children and two teachers were killed in the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Police response to the massacre has been heavily criticized and is currently under investigation.
State and federal reviews of the shooting cited cascading problems in law enforcement training, communication, leadership and technology, and questioned why officers waited so long.
According to the state review, Gonzales told investigators that once police realized there were students still sitting in other classrooms, he helped evacuate them from the school.
Some family members of the victims have said more officers should be indicted.
“They all waited and allowed children and teachers to die,” said Velma Lisa Duran, whose sister Irma Garcia was one of the two teachers who were killed.
Prosecutors will likely face a high bar to win a conviction. Juries are often reluctant to convict law enforcement officers for inaction, as seen after the Parkland, Fla., school massacre in 2018.
Sheriff’s deputy Scot Peterson was charged with failing to confront the shooter in that attack. It was the first such prosecution in the U.S. for an on-campus shooting, and Peterson was acquitted by a jury in 2023.
At the request of Gonzales’s attorneys, the trial was moved about 320 kilometres southeast to Corpus Christi. They argued Gonzales could not receive a fair trial in Uvalde, and prosecutors did not object.
Uvalde, a town of 15,000, still has several prominent reminders of the shooting. Robb Elementary is closed but still stands, and a memorial of 21 crosses and flowers sits near the school sign. Murals depicting several victims can still be seen on the walls of several buildings.
Jesse Rizo, whose nine-year-old niece Jackie was one of the students killed, said even with a three-hour drive to Corpus Christi, the family would like to have someone attend the trial every day.
“It’s important that the jury see that Jackie had a big, strong family,” Rizo said.