Former school police officer Adrian Gonzales was found not guilty after prosecutors spent weeks arguing that he didn’t follow his active shooter training when a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022.
Gonzales broke down in tears and hugged his counsel after the verdict was read. Many of the people in the gallery, who are parents of the victims, also started crying.
Gonzales briefly spoke at a news conference after the verdict was read, telling reporters that he thanks the jury for considering all of the evidence. When asked if he had anything to say to the families of the victims, Gonzales replied: “Not right now.”
Nico LaHood, one of Gonzales’ defense attorneys, said the jury told him there were “gaps” in the evidence, which led to the not guilty verdict.
The jury deliberated for a little more than seven hours on Wednesday after the prosecution and the defense finished their closing arguments. The prosecution argued that Gonzales had a duty to act but failed to do so. The defense, meanwhile, argued that he drove into danger while other officers on the scene with a line of sight on the shooter drove away.
Nearly 400 police officers were on the scene of the shooting on May 24, 2022, but it took them 77 minutes to confront the gunman. The head of the Texas Department of Public Safety later called the response to the mass shooting an “abject failure.”
And with the shooter dead at the scene, there’s been little justice for the parents of the victims.
In 2023, some of the parents fought in vain for stricter gun laws in Texas, including a regulation to raise the age to buy a semiautomatic rifle from 18 years to 21 years old.
Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter, Lexi, was killed in the mass shooting, even launched an unsuccessful bid for mayor of Uvalde in 2022 in an attempt to hold local leadership accountable.
Illustration: HuffPost; Photos: Getty
Gonzales’ trial was emotional from its first day, when prosecutors called several former teachers to testify and argued that while Gonzales did not follow his active shooter training, the teachers and students inside the school did.
Lynn Deming, a former fourth-grade teacher at Robb Elementary, cried as she testified about hiding in her classroom with her students and repeatedly telling them how much she loved them in case that was the last thing they ever heard. Parents of some of the surviving victims also testified about the injuries and mental health disorders their children now live with.
An outburst from the gallery in the trial’s second week also heightened emotions in the courtroom. Velma Lisa Duran — whose sister Irma Garcia died in the shooting — erupted after Joe Vasquez, a deputy for the Zavala County Sheriff’s Office, testified that it would be dangerous for an officer to enter a narrow passageway described as a “fatal funnel.” Duran yelled out that her sister, an unarmed teacher, had entered the “fatal funnel.” She was removed from the courtroom, and later told Texas Public Radio that she’d reached a breaking point when the defense tried to hail Gonzales as a hero.
The defense only called two witnesses to the stand. One was Claudia Rodriguez, a secretary at a nearby funeral home, who testified that she’d seen the shooter hiding between cars in the school’s parking lot when Gonzales arrived on campus. The other was Willie Cantu, a retired SWAT officer with the San Antonio Police Department, who theorized why Gonzales might not have been able to locate the shooter before he entered the school.
Gonzales’ case follows the 2023 trial of Scot Peterson, a former deputy sheriff, who was acquitted of child neglect in relation to the 2018 mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead and 18 others injured.
