A former police officer facing charges that he failed in his role to confront the shooter at an Uvalde, Texas, elementary school in 2022, was acquitted on Jan. 21 after jurors deliberated for more than seven hours.
Jurors found Adrian Gonzalez, 52, not guilty in what has become the first trial over an alleged hesitant law enforcement response to one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, where gunman Salvador Ramos killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022.
The former police officer was facing up to two years in prison over criminal charges on allegations of failing to prevent a crime and save lives.
Gonzales, surrounded by his lawyers in the courtroom, appeared to be holding back tears while the verdict was read out loud.
The nearly three-week trial, a rare instance in the United States of a law enforcement officer on trial over failing to stop a crime, included first-person accounts from teachers who were shot and survived the massacre.
Prosecutors argued that Gonzales failed to stop or prevent the teenage shooter from entering the school, abandoning his training and allowing the incident to unfold.
After hundreds of law enforcement officers finally rushed into the school, 77 minutes elapsed before a tactical team was able to confront Ramos in a classroom and kill him.
Gonzales and one other officer were indicted, leading to criticism from some victims’ families who wanted to see more officers charged for the delayed response.
During closing statements, special prosecutor Bill Turner told jurors, “This is a failure to act case.”
He argued that Gonzales had a duty to act even if that meant facing the gunman alone.
“We’re expected to act differently when talking about a child that can’t defend themselves,” Turner said. “If you have a duty to act, you can’t stand by while a child is in imminent danger.”
Jason Goss, Gonzales’ defense attorney, argued that the former officer was not responsible for the shooting.
“The monster that hurt those kids is dead,” Goss said. “It is one of the worst things that ever happened.”
Goss suggested that a conviction would amount to expecting police to be “perfect” when responding to a crisis and could lead to more hesitation in the future.
Gonzales had pleaded not guilty to 29 counts of child abandonment or endangerment for the 19 students who Ramos killed and the 10 others who were left with injuries.
Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell told jurors that the teachers and children all followed the school’s shooting training.
“We’re not going to continue to teach children to rehearse their own death and not hold [police] to the training that’s mandated by state law,” Mitchell said.
The trial for former Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo, the other officer indicted alongside Gonzales, has not yet been scheduled.
