Trial begins for former Uvalde officer charged in Robb Elementary shooting response

(CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas) — Nearly four years after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in a Texas elementary school, a jury is set to decide whether a police officer should be held criminally responsible in connection with one of the worst school shootings in American history.

Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of former Uvalde school police officer Adrian Gonzales, charged with allegedly placing more than two dozen children in “imminent danger” by failing to respond to the crisis as it unfolded.

Prosecutors allege that Gonzales, one of the first of nearly 400 officers to respond to the rampage, failed to engage the shooter despite knowing his location, having time to respond and being trained to handle active shooters. It ultimately took 77 minutes for law enforcement to mount a counter-assault that would kill the gunman.

Ever since the shooting tore apart Uvalde on May 24, 2022, families of the victims have been seeking accountability and answers. Many have argued their children might have been saved had police confronted the gunman more quickly.

The trial, being staged 200 miles from Uvalde in Corpus Christi, marks an exceedingly rare instance of prosecutors seeking to convict a member of law enforcement for a response to a school shooting.

Prosecutors in June 2024 charged both Gonzales and Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo — the on-site commander on the day of the shooting — with multiple counts of endangerment and abandonment of a child.

Gonzales and Arredondo are the only officers charged. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Investigations have determined that Salvador Ramos, 18, acted alone in carrying out the massacre. He was killed on-site at Robb Elementary School.

Gonzales was charged with 29 felony counts, one for each of the 19 fourth-graders who died in the shooting and 10 students who survived in classroom 112.

According to the indictment, he “failed to engage, distract or delay the shooter” after hearing the gunshots and learning about the shooter’s location.

Arredondo was charged with 10 felony counts for allegedly endangering the 10 survivors by delaying the law enforcement response and not following active shooter protocols.

Arredondo and Gonzales were charged at the same time, but Gonzales will be facing trial first and alone.

Arredondo’s case has been delayed indefinitely by an ongoing federal lawsuit filed after the U.S. Border Patrol refused repeated efforts by Uvalde prosecutors to interview Border Patrol agents who responded to the shooting, including two who were in the tactical unit responsible for killing the gunman at the school.

Each count carries a maximum of two years in prison, though judges and juries in Texas have broad discretion in imposing sentences, according to Sandra Guerra Thompson, a criminal law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

“There’s a lot of different ways that this could go,” she said. “All the children who were so horrifically killed that would seem to motivate a longer sentence for anyone who is found to have some fault.”

Ahead of trial, prosecutors issued at least 75 subpoenas to potential witnesses, including police officers, teachers, and families of victims, according to court filings.

More than 20 members of the elite Texas Rangers, 16 members of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, and multiple physicians from nearby hospitals have received subpoenas, according to court filings.

In the attempt to make their case against Gonzales, prosecutors turned to a child endangerment law more commonly used to prosecute negligent parents or caretakers responsible for things like leaving a child in a hot car or without supervision at a beach. The law has rarely been used against police officers, experts noted, because of the difficulty in proving they had a legal obligation to the children.

“The critical issue here is whether the individual has a duty to act,” said Thompson, the law professor in Houston.

According to Houston-based defense attorney Nicole DeBorde Hochglaube, prosecutors will need to establish that Gonzales had a legal duty — not just a moral obligation — to intervene and that he failed to follow his training for active shooter scenarios.

“The jury is going to have the nasty task of looking through some horrible things to determine if he had the duty to act,” she said, referencing evidence such as body camera footage and frantic 911 calls from the shooting.

Legal experts who spoke with ABC News noted that Gonzales’ role as a responding officer — not the commander or case agent at the scene — could make it tough to convince the jury the man’s conduct amounted to a crime.

If prosecutors can secure a conviction, it would mark the first time that a police officer has been held accountable for how they carried out their duties at a mass shooting to which they responded.

Prosecutors rarely attempt to charge police officers who have responded to mass shootings, according to Phil Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, who maintains a database of police officers who have been arrested. Of the 25,000 arrests since 2005 included in the database, Stinson identified only two prosecutions similar to those against Gonzales and Arredondo.

Defense attorneys for Gonzales have argued he is being unfairly scapegoated for a crime he didn’t commit and that he did all he could to save and rescue children who were in imminent danger.

“Those precious souls were stolen by a monster that day, but that monster was not Adrian [Gonazales],” defense attorney Nico LaHood told ABC affiliate KSAT in San Antonio. “He was there, he was present. He was going into danger. And so the narrative of the government is something we’re going to contest highly, and that’s going to be the point of contention before this jury.”

Court filings shed little light on the case Gonzales’ lawyers will mount, though attorneys have signaled plans to use drone footage from Robb Elementary to assist them.

“The factual circumstances of this case intricately entail the timing and spatial proximity of the actors and events unfolding at Robb Elementary school on the day of the murders,” attorneys wrote in a court filing.