Uvalde officer was told location of gunman but he failed to act, prosecutors say

(CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas) — Opening statements are underway in the criminal trial of former Uvalde, Texas, school police officer Adrian Gonzales, who is accused of endangering dozens of children during the police response to the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School. 

Gonzales, who is charged with 29 counts of child endangerment, is alleged to have neglected his duty and training during the chaotic response to the shooting, which left 19 children and two teachers dead. 

Prosecutor Bill Turner spoke softly and on the verge of tears at the start of his opening argument. His statement marked the first time prosecutors have provided their rationale for charging Gonzales, disclosing that a teacher came face-to-face with gunman Salvador Ramos before Ramos entered the school, and she tried to warn Gonzales.

“She’s face-to face with the gunman, and he fires on her, and she turns to run, and when she turns to run, she trips and she falls. And when she gets up, Adrian Gonzalez, the police officer, is there,” Turner said. “She says, ‘He’s over there.’ She urges him to go get him.” 

“He gets on the radio and says, ‘Shots are fired, he’s wearing black, he’s in the parking lot,'” Turner said. “He knows where he is, but Adrian Gonzalez remains at the south side of the school.”

As Turner walked the jury through the tragic minutes that followed that encounter — describing the number of gunshots fired by Ramos as Gonzales allegedly waited outside — Turner hammered at the point that Gonzales allegedly stayed where he was, rather than try to stop the shooting. 

Ramos “fired shots into a classroom full of children … Adrian Gonzalez remains,” he said. 

Despite nearly 400 officers responding to the shooting, law enforcement took 77 minutes to mount a counterassault to kill Ramos.

Judge Sid Harle seated a full jury after an emotionally fraught selection process on Monday. Dozens of potential jurors voiced frustration with the police response, and more than 100 excused themselves from the process, saying they did not believe they could be fair and impartial. 

“They were only protecting themselves more than they were protecting the children,” one dismissed juror told the court, as others cheered and clapped in agreement. “I would have sacrificed myself to save them, but they didn’t. They just sat there.”

Gonzales has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers argue he is being scapegoated for a broader law enforcement failure. During the jury selection process, some voiced frustration that more officers have not been charged in the years following the tragedy. 

“Are you saying this man is the whole problem? You are sticking it on his shoulders alone?” one dismissed juror remarked. “How many of them were out there? They should all be sitting there with him.”

Gonzales was charged last year, along with former Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo, the on-site commander on the day of the shooting. Arredondo’s trial has been indefinitely postponed due to a pending civil lawsuit after the members of an elite tactical unit with the U.S. Border Patrol refused to speak with prosecutors about their involvement that day. 

The Gonzales case marks the second time in U.S. history that prosecutors have sought to hold a member of law enforcement criminally accountable for their response to a mass shooting. In 2023, a Florida jury acquitted Scot Peterson, a former Broward County sheriff’s deputy, who was charged with child neglect and culpable negligence for his alleged inaction during the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Peterson’s lawyers argued his role as an armed school resource officer did not amount to a caregiving post needed to prove child neglect in Florida, and that the response to the shooting was muddled by poor communication.

According to Bob Jarvis, a professor of law at Nova Southeastern University, prosecutors in the Gonzales case are likely to face the same legal hurdles that doomed the Peterson case. 

“What you’re really trying to do,” he said, “is argue … that being a coward is a crime, and that is very, very difficult.”