A former Uvalde, Texas, police officer involved in the devastating law enforcement response to a 2022 elementary school shooting that left 19 students dead pleaded not guilty Thursday before a tearful crowd of victims’ families pleading with them to “apologize” and “remember their names.”
Adrian Gonzalez, 51, one of the first officers to respond to the shooting at Robb Elementary School, appeared in court to face charges stemming from his failure to try to subdue the shooter.
Gonzalez, along with disgraced former Police Chief Pete Arredondo, were indicted by a grand jury last month on felony charges including child abandonment and child endangerment.
The former officers were among those who waited for more than an hour in a hallway outside a classroom at Robb Elementary School when 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos used an AR-15-style rifle to kill 19 children and two teachers.
Security camera footage shows that officers, including Arredondo and Gonzalez, did not attempt to enter classrooms until tactical teams arrived on the scene about 77 minutes after the riot began.
Gonzalez faces 29 charges of child abandonment and neglect, 19 of which are for the children who were killed and 10 for the children who survived the massacre in Classroom 112. A.B.C. The news was reported.
More than 30 survivors and family members of victims were in the courtroom as Gonzalez maintained his innocence, some of them visibly upset, one yelling “Say sorry!” at the former officer as he walked to his car. CNN report.
Jazmine Cazares, whose 9-year-old sister, Jackie Cazares, died in the massacre, gave him the middle finger, while James C. Alvarado, a friend of some of the families, yelled, “Remember their names.” The New York Times reported..
Gonzalez and Arredondo are the only officers to have faced criminal charges so far in what has become one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, baffling the victims’ families.
“Only two people were charged but more should have been charged because there were a lot of senior officers that knew what to do that day and didn’t do it, but only these two were charged,” said Jerry Mata, whose 10-year-old daughter Tess died in the shooting. Korea CRA Post-indictment hearing.
“We’re going to take what we’ve got and keep fighting for our kids and our two teachers and see it through to the end,” he said.
Gonzalez faces 29 charges that carry a maximum sentence of two years in prison each. He is due to appear in court on September 16.
