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The first criminal trial of any law enforcement officer who responded to the catastrophic mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, nearly four years ago began on Monday with jury selection.
Adrian Gonzales, a former school district police officer, is accused by prosecutors of failing to follow his active shooter training during the horrific 2022 incident.
He faces 29 counts of child endangerment, carrying a maximum sentence of 58 years in prison.
Gonzales, who worked for the Uvalde school district from 2021 to 2023, was one of the first officers on the scene the day a shooter killed 19 students and two teachers at the elementary school, in one of the nation’s worst-ever school shootings.
More than 400 officers were on scene that day, but Gonzales and Pete Arrendendo, the school district’s former police chief and that day’s incident commander, are the only ones currently facing criminal charges.
Gonzales was indicted in June. He faces one charge for each of the 19 children who were killed and an additional 10 charges for those who were injured.
Local police have faced little accountability after it took them 77 minutes to confront the shooter. A Texas House report found the authorities’ response featured “systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making.” An independent investigation claimed the police acted in “good faith.”
But the family members of those killed want justice. Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son Uziyah Garcia died in the mass shooting, said in a TikTok posted Monday that it has been 1,322 days since the shooting — days that Gonzales has walked around “scot-free with no care in the world.”
“But that’s also 1,322 days since my son has not been here,” Cross said. “It’s three birthdays missed, that’s three Christmases, three Thanksgivings, three of every holiday you can imagine.”
The trial, which was moved to Corpus Christi after Gonzales’ lawyers argued it would be nearly impossible to find an impartial jury in Uvalde, will be one of the first of its kind. Scot Peterson, a former sheriff’s deputy who was on scene at Parkland High School during the February 2018 mass shooting there, was similarly prosecuted for child neglect due to his inactivity but acquitted on all charges in 2023.
Sam Bassett, a Texas criminal defense attorney, told HuffPost that this trial could have an impact on future prosecutions of police officers. He said prosecutors will have to prove that the students at Robb Elementary were in Gonzales’ “care, custody or control” and that he had a duty to act.
“How do you define a duty to act when you have a crazed mass shooter with a possible automatic weapon going around?” Bassett said. “Because you also have to protect yourself and protect other students when you’re engaging such a shooter. So it’s a mess of a case.”
Bassett said the jury might make their decision “emotionally.”
As jury selection began, potential jurors were asked if they remembered hearing or seeing anything about the deadly mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, as well as if they had any family members or close friends in law enforcement.
Cross said on his TikTok that he doesn’t have much hope these days, but he hopes for some kind of justice.
“I don’t hope for anything because I don’t want to be disappointed again,” Cross said. “But I will say this: I look forward to receiving just a little bit of justice. I look forward to seeing just a little bit of accountability and I hope these jurors see him for what he is.”
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