Ex-Uvalde cop goes to trial over police fiasco during 2022 mass shooting

Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a former school police officer from Uvalde, Texas, who is accused of failing to protect the elementary school students and staff in the 2022 mass shooting that killed 21 people.

Bexar County Judge Sid Harle excused three potential jurors who said they had already made up their mind about the case in which former Officer Adrian Gonzales is facing charges of child endangerment and abandonment.

More than 400 potential jurors are being interviewed for the trial that has made national headlines over its implications about police culpability.

Judge Harle said the heavy media coverage means that most jurors likely know about the shooting at Robb Elementary School and the law enforcement debacle that followed.

He said reading about the story does not disqualify someone from serving on the jury, as long as that doesn’t prevent them from making unbiased opinions about how the law is applied.

The trial is taking place in Corpus Christi, more than 200 miles from Uvalde, after Mr. Gonzales’ attorneys argued that keeping the trial local would affect jurors’ impartiality.

Nearly 80 minutes had passed between when authorities first arrived at the school and when police gunned down 18-year-old assailant Salvador Rolando Ramos.

Ramos carried out one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, with 17 injured on top of those killed, as parents and family members begged the roughly 400-person police presence to confront the shooter.

“They all waited and allowed children and teachers to die,” Velma Lisa Duran, whose sister Irma Garcia was one of the two slain teachers, told The Associated Press.

Prosecutors argued that Mr. Gonzales, 52, put the children in imminent danger by disregarding his active shooter training and failing to engage or distract the shooter.

Mr. Gonzales further failed to run toward the gunfire in the school despite knowing where the shooter was holed up, according to the filing.

The ex-cop told investigators that he did help evacuate children once he knew they were still hiding out in classrooms.

“He was focused on getting children out of that building,” defense attorney Nico LaHood said in a statement. “He knows where his heart was and what he tried to do for those children.”

Pete Arredondo, the former Uvalde schools police chief, has also been charged over his response to the attack. Like Mr. Gonzales, the former chief requested the trial be moved out of Uvalde so he can face an impartial jury.

A review of the shooting by Texas lawmakers found that the school failed to keep its exterior doors locked, allowing Ramos to walk into the building.

The report determined that spotty communication between authorities prevented them from accurately assessing Ramos’ whereabouts and how to stop the threat. Those problems ballooned as law enforcement officers from other agencies rushed to the school, the report said, yet did not try to stop the killer.

The probe concluded that Mr. Arredondo failed in his role as incident commander — a role he gave to himself according to the school system’s active shooter plan — and did not coordinate responsibilities among the other officers.

But lawmakers noted that “other than the attacker, the committee did not find any ’villains’ in the course of its investigation. There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives.”

There is precedent for school-based police officers avoiding convictions for their poor responses to campus violence.

Former sheriff’s deputy Scot Peterson was charged with child neglect and culpable negligence for his failure to confront the shooter during the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.

It was the first time an officer was criminally charged for failing to go after a shooter, but Mr. Peterson was acquitted of all charges in 2023.

If convicted of all 29 counts brought against him, Mr. Gonzales could be sentenced to up to two years for each offense.