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In the year Testimony concluded Tuesday in the trial of a former Uvalde, Texas, school police officer accused of failing to stop a gunman in the critical first minutes of the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School.
Adrian Gonzalez’s defense attorneys rested their case after calling two witnesses, including a police tactical expert, to bolster their claim that Gonzalez did his best after arriving on campus in a chaotic scene.
Gonzales pleaded not guilty to 29 counts of child abandonment or endangerment. If convicted, he faces up to two years in prison.
Gonzales did not take the stand in his own defense. Closing arguments are scheduled for Wednesday before the jury begins deliberations.
The prosecutor dropped the case after 9 days of testimony from 36 witnesses The trial began on January 5. Only two of Gonzalez’s witnesses, including a woman who works across the street from the school, told jurors the shooter ducked between cars and tried to get out of sight — testimony that bolstered Gonzalez’s claim that he never saw the gunman.
Emotional testimony
Jurors heard sometimes gripping and emotional testimony from teachers who recounted the terrifying moment an 18-year-old gunman walked into a school and killed 19 students and two teachers. Prosecutors presented graphic photos taken from the room and brought in police to describe the chaos of the response.
At one point, when the trial began, the sister of one of the teachers killed that day was taken away from the courtroom in a fit of rage after one of the policemen testified.
Prosecutors’ case evoked the raw emotion and shock of the May 24, 2022 massacre as they tried to show what could have been avoided if Gonzalez had caught the gunman in the first seconds of the attack.
Gonzalez, 52, a 10-year police veteran, led active shooter response training two months before the shooting and abandoned the training and failed to try to stop the gunman, Salvador Ramos, before he entered the school, prosecutors allege.
“Every second counts in an active shooter situation.” Special prosecutor Bill Turner said Tuesday that Gonzalez drilled down on the three minutes between when he first arrived and when he entered the building. “If a policeman is standing and waiting, many victims can die every second.”
But Gonzales was unfazed by the chaotic past and said he never saw the gunman. The lawyers asserted that three officers across the street from the school saw the gunman still outside and that no shots were fired. Body camera footage shows Gonzalez as one of the first group of officers to enter the shadowy, smoky hallway as they try to reach the killer in the room.
An unusual case in court
The trial in Corpus Christi, Texas, is a rare case of a police officer accused of failing to stop a crime to save a life.
The hearing included some graphic and violent evidence.
In addition to classroom photos, jurors heard tapes of the gunshots and listened to a medical examiner describe the children’s fatal wounds. They also heard brief, but anguished testimonies from the parents of several children killed or wounded that day.
Teacher Arnulfo Reyes said he saw a “dark shadow with a gun” enter the classroom before they were shot and killed, killing all 11 of his students. Other teachers described young students, some as young as second graders, carrying safety scissors to attack if the gunman entered their classrooms.
Prosecutors stumbled during their case, which included inconsistent testimony from witnesses and a photo from a room showing “LOL” written in blood by mistake.
A teacher who is one of the first witnesses He was fired Because prosecutors did not disclose it before the trial, she recalled seeing the gunman dressed in black approaching the school.
Defense lawyers asked for a second court date, but it was denied. After the state rested, they asked the judge to rule that the state had not proven its case. And that was denied.
Gonzales was one of 376 federal, state and local officers. He threw it to school As the attack occurred. It takes more than an hour for the tactical team to break into the room and kill the gunman.
Only Gonzalez and former Uvalde Schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo have been charged with a crime for the delayed response.