HOUSTON — former Uvalde, Texas, School Police Officer Adrian Gonzalez was among the first officers to arrive at the school Rob Elementary After a gunman opened fire on students and teachers.
Prosecutors allege that instead of rushing to confront the shooter, Gonzalez failed to take action to protect the students. Many families Of the 19 fourth-graders and two teachers killed, they believe Gonzalez and the nearly 400 responding officers would have confronted the gunman sooner instead of waiting. More than an hourMaybe lives could have been saved.
More than three and a half years after the murder, the first criminal trial for the murder was held Delayed law enforcement response One of the deadliest school shootings in US history is set to begin.
It is a rare case in which a police officer can be convicted for allegedly failing to act to stop a crime and protect lives.
Here’s a look at the charges and legal issues surrounding the trial.
Gonzalez was charged with 29 counts of child endangerment among those killed and injured in the May 2022 shooting. The indictment alleges that he placed the children in “imminent danger” of injury or death by failing to engage, distract or delay the shooter and not following his active shooter training. The indictment says he did not move toward the shooting despite hearing gunshots and being told where the shooting was.
Each count of child endangerment carries a potential penalty of up to two years in prison.
State and federal reviews of the shooting have been cited Consecutive problems in law enforcement, communications, leadership and technology training and questioned why officers from multiple agencies waited so long before confronting and killing gunman Salvador Ramos.
Gonzalez’s lawyer, Nico LaHood, said his client is innocent and that public anger over the shooting was misdirected.
“He was focused on getting the kids out of that building,” LaHood said. “He knows where his heart was and what he tried to do for these kids.”
Jury selection in Gonzalez’s trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 5 in Corpus Christi, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Uvalde. The trial was moved after defense attorneys said Gonzalez could not get a fair trial in Uvalde.
Gonzalez, 52, and former Uvalde Schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo are Only the officers were charged. Arredondo has been charged with multiple counts of child endangerment and child abandonment. His trial date has not been set, and he is also seeking a change of venue.
Prosecutors did not explain why only Gonzalez and Arredondo were charged. Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment.
Sandra Guerra Thompson, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, said it was “extremely unusual” for an officer to be prosecuted for not taking action.
“Ultimately, you’re talking about convicting someone for failing to act, and that’s always a challenge, because you have to show they failed to take reasonable steps,” Thompson said.
Phil Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University who maintains a nationwide database of nearly 25,000 arrests of police officers since 2005, said the initial search found only two similar prosecutions.
One of them included Florida Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Peterson, who was indicted after 2018 Parkland School Massacre For allegedly failing to confront the shooter – the first prosecution of its kind in the United States for a campus shooting. It was He was acquitted By a jury in 2023.
The other was the 2022 conviction of former Baltimore police officer Christopher Nguyen for failing to protect an assault victim. That conviction was overturned by the Maryland Supreme Court in July, and prosecutors failed to show that Nguyen had a legal duty to protect the victim.
The justices in Maryland cited an earlier U.S. Supreme Court decision on the public duty doctrine, which holds that public officials, such as police, generally owe a duty to the public at large rather than to specific individuals unless there is a special relationship.
Securing a conviction will be difficult, said Michael Winn, a Houston criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor not involved in the case.
“This is clearly gross negligence. I think it would be difficult to prove that there was some type of malicious criminal offense,” Wynn said.
But plaintiffs may be well off nonetheless, said Thompson, the law professor.
“You’re talking about young children being slaughtered and very long delays by a lot of officers,” she said. “I feel like this is a different situation because of the tremendous damage that has been done to so many children.”
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Associated Press writer Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, contributed.
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