And again... (Another US Shooting)

[spaminator]

Trial begins for Uvalde school policeman over mass shooting response
The case against Adrian Gonzales is a rare example of an attempt to hold a law enforcement officer accountable for their actions during a mass shooting

Author of the article:AFP
AFP
Published Jan 06, 2026 • 2 minute read

Crosses honor those who lost their lives during the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas in 2022.
Crosses honor those who lost their lives during the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas in 2022. Photo by Mark Felix /AFP/File
Houston (AFP) — The trial began Monday of a former police officer charged with shying away from tackling the gunman who killed 21 people, including 19 children, at a Texas school in 2022, US media reported.


The case against Adrian Gonzales is a rare example of an attempt to hold a law enforcement officer accountable for their actions during a mass shooting.


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, in what was America’s deadliest school shooting in a decade.

Former school district police chief Pete Arredondo also faces charges over the tragedy, but will be tried separately.

The official response 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.

A total of 376 officers — border guards, state police, city police, local sheriff departments and elite forces — responded to the massacre, a Texas state lawmaker’s report said in July 2022.

The shooter, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was reportedly killed by law enforcement at the site of the attack.



On Monday, jury selection was underway in the trial against Gonzales, who faces 29 felony counts of child endangerment — one for each of the 19 children who died and for the 10 students who survived.

US media reported that the indictment charges he “failed to engage, distract or delay the shooter” after hearing shots.

Arredondo faces 10 felony counts for allegedly delaying the official response.

Both men have pleaded not guilty.

Judge Sid Harle said he expected the trial in Corpus Christi, 200 miles (320 kilometres) from Uvalde, to last around two weeks, ABC News reported.

Trial begins for Uvalde school policeman over mass shooting response

Former school district police chief Pete Arredondo also faces charges over the tragedy, but will be tried separately.

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[spaminator]

Former Uvalde officer acquitted for response to 2022 school shooting
The verdict is a major setback for prosecutors

Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Joanna Slater, The Washington Post
Published Jan 22, 2026 • 4 minute read

Uvalde School Shooting Trial
Former Uvalde school district police officer Adrian Gonzales, left, reacts as he stands beside his attorney, Nico LaHood, to answer reporters' questions after the jury found Gonzales not guilty at the Nueces County Courthouse on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, in Corpus Christi, Texas. Photo by Sam Owens /The San Antonio Express-News via AP, Pool
A Texas jury on Wednesday acquitted a former Uvalde school police officer on 29 counts of child endangerment after he remained outside Robb Elementary School instead of immediately confronting the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers in their classrooms in 2022.


The verdict is a major setback for prosecutors, who portrayed the case against Adrian Gonzales as a way to deliver justice and accountability for one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.


Instead, jurors appeared to agree with Gonzales’s lawyers, who described him as unfairly singled out among the hundreds of law enforcement officers who arrived on the scene – a response that investigators said was marked by significant communication failures and poor decision-making.

Had he been convicted, the 52-year-old Gonzales faced up to two years in prison.

The former officer of the six-member Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department was one of the first law enforcement personnel to respond on that sunny May day, when a teenage shooter walked into Robb Elementary through an unlocked door and opened fire inside two adjoining fourth-grade classrooms.

Prosecutors argued that Gonzales bore particular responsibility for the tragedy. They focused on his initial encounter with a frantic woman fleeing the school, who pointed toward the general location of the shooter as gunfire was heard inside, and his subsequent decision not to immediately rush in, which they said went against his active-shooter training.


However, defence lawyers noted that four other officers got to the school at almost the same time but also did not enter right away to confront the gunman. Unlike Gonzales, three of them were in a position to see the assailant, his lawyers said. One thought he spotted the shooter outside the school and asked for permission to fire, his superior officer testified.

Minutes after he arrived, Gonzales did go into the school with several other officers. Gunman Salvador Ramos, armed with an AR-style rifle, shot at them, grazing two, and the group retreated.

Nearly 400 officers ultimately converged on the school but did not breach the classroom where Ramos was located until more than an hour after he’d entered the building. A tactical unit shot and killed him.

Emotions ran high during the three-week trial, which featured wrenching testimony from teachers who survived the shooting and parents whose children were among the murdered and wounded.

The prosecution is “trying to hijack your emotion to circumvent your reason,” defence attorney Nico LaHood told jurors. Gonzales was “easy pickings,” he said. “The man at the bottom of the totem pole.”


Both of Gonzales’s lawyers repeatedly acknowledged the grief of families and the community. “There’s nothing that’s going to bring these kids back,” Jason Goss said during closing arguments Wednesday. “Nothing is ever going to solve that pain.”

But, he added, “You do not honour their memory by doing an injustice in their name.”

Gonzales is one of two former officers to be charged in connection with the mass killing. Pete Arredondo, the former chief of Uvalde’s school district police, is also set to stand trial on charges of child endangerment. Arredondo has pleaded not guilty.

Wednesday’s verdict marks the second time that a jury has declined to convict a school police officer for failing to stop a school shooting. In 2023, Scot Peterson, a sheriff’s deputy who worked as a security officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was acquitted of similar charges. Five years earlier, a gunman had killed 17 students, teachers and staff members at the school.


Gonzales’s trial took place before Judge Sid Harle in Corpus Christi, more than 200 miles from Uvalde, after the defense argued that a change of venue was necessary to obtain an impartial verdict. Jurors began deliberating early afternoon Wednesday.

Gonzales, in a blue suit and a tie patterned with crosses, wept and hugged one of his lawyers after the verdict was read. He had not testified in his own defence, but prosecutors played an hour-long video, recorded not long after the shooting, in which he recounted his actions at the school.

Christina Mitchell, the district attorney for Uvalde County, had told jurors that returning a guilty verdict would send a message to all law enforcement officers about their duties to members of the public and children in particular.

The children inside Robb Elementary had followed their lockdown training, staying quiet and hidden, she said, while Gonzales did not run to confront the shooter, as his training suggested.

“We’re not going to continue to teach children to rehearse their own death and not hold [officers] to the training that’s mandated by the law,” Mitchell said. “We cannot let 19 children die in vain.”

Mothers of several of the children killed in the massacre cried together outside the Nueces County courthouse Wednesday night. Relatives of another victim, 9-year-old Jacklyn Cazares, reacted with fury immediately after the verdict.

“I’m angry,” said her father, Javier Cazares, in video provided by local television station KSAT. “We had a little hope, but it wasn’t enough.”

Former Uvalde officer acquitted for response to 2022 school shooting

Had he been convicted, the 52-year-old Gonzales faced up to two years in prison.

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