Uvalde police officer found not guilty of child endangerment

A former police officer in Uvalde, Texas has been found not guilty of child endangerment for his response to the mass shooting at an elementary school in May 2022.

Adrian Gonzalez, 52, was acquitted on all 29 counts of child endangerment in connection with the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on Wednesday, after jurors deliberated for more than seven hours.

The former cop appeared to close his eyes and take a deep breath as he stood to hear the verdict. Afterward he hugged one of his lawyers and appeared to be fighting back tears.

Behind him in the courtroom, several victims' family members sat in silence, some crying or wiping away tears.

Gonzalez was among the first to respond to the scene, and prosecutors had claimed he failed to take action - endangering the 19 students who died as well as 10 other students who survived the massacre.

Two teachers were also killed in the school shooting as law enforcement took more than an hour to launch a counterassault. 

Prosecutors claimed Gonzalez, in particular, had a unique opportunity to stop the mass shooting when he learned of gunman Salvador Ramos' location from a teaching aide - who testified she repeatedly urged Gonzalez to intervene, but said he did 'nothing,' ABC News reports.

Attorneys for the former police officers, though, argued that he was being unfairly blamed for a larger law enforcement failure that day.

They claimed he did everything he could in the moment - including gathering critical information, evacuating children and entering the school - and said Gonzalez acted on the information he had.

The defense also pointed out that other officers arrived around the same time as Gonzalez and that at least one cop had an opportunity to shoot the gunman before he entered the school. 

At least 370 law enforcement officers rushed to the school, where 77 minutes passed before a tactical team finally entered the classroom to confront and kill the gunman. Gonzales was one of just two officers indicted, angering some victim´s relatives who said they wanted more to be held accountable. 

He was charged with 29 counts of child abandonment and endangerment - each count representing the 19 students who were killed and 10 others who were injured. 

Gonzalez's nearly three-week long trial included emotional testimony from teachers who were shot and survived.

During closing arguments earlier on Wednesday, attorneys on both sides told jurors that their verdict would send a message to law enforcement officers across Texas - though they disagreed on what that message should be, Texas Public Radio reports. 

Prosecutors urged jurors to hold Gonzalez accountable, with special prosecutor Bill Turner saying: 'We're expected to act differently when talking about a child that can't defend themselves.

'If you have a duty to act, you can´t stand by while a child is in imminent danger.'

'We cannot continue to let children die in vain,' District Attorney Christina Mitchell then argued. 

Meanwhile, defense attorney Nico LaHood urged jurors to reject what he described as an effort to single out one officer for systemic failures.

'Send a message to the government that it wasn't right to choose to concentrate on Adrian Gonzalez,' he said. 'You can't pick and choose.' 

During the trial, jurors heard a medical examiner describe the fatal wounds to the children, some of whom were shot more than a dozen times. 

Several parents also told of sending their children to school for an awards ceremony and the panic that ensued as the attack unfolded.

Gonzales´ lawyers said he arrived upon a chaotic scene of rifle shots echoing on school grounds and never saw the gunman before the attacker went inside the school. 

They also insisted that three other officers who arrived seconds later had a better chance to stop the gunman, arguing that there were just two minutes between Gonzalez arriving at the school and Ramos entering the fourth-grade classrooms where the victims were killed.

Defense attorneys even played body camera footage showing Gonzalez was among the first officers to enter a shadowy and smoke-filled hallway trying to reach the killer, according to KWTX. 

Rather than acting cowardly, they argued, Gonzalez risked his life when he went into a 'hallway of death' others were unwilling to enter in the early moments. 

Gonzales´ attorney, Jason Goss, told jurors before they began deliberating that a conviction would tell police they have to be 'perfect' when responding to a crisis and could make them even more hesitant in the future.

'The monster that hurt those kids is dead,' Goss said. 'It is one of the worst things that ever happened.'

The trial was moved hundreds of miles to Corpus Christi after defense attorneys argued that Gonzales could not receive a fair trial in Uvalde. Still, some victims´ families have made the long drive to watch the proceedings.

Early on the sister of one of the teachers killed was removed from the courtroom after an angry outburst following one officer´s testimony.

Gonzales´ trial was tightly focused on his actions in the early moments of the attack, but prosecutors also presented the graphic and emotional testimony as the result of police failures.

State and federal reviews of the shooting cited cascading problems in law enforcement training, communication, leadership and technology, and questioned why officers waited so long.

Former Uvalde Schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was the onsite commander on the day of the shooting, is also charged with endangerment or abandonment of a child and has pleaded not guilty.

But his case has been delayed indefinitely by an ongoing federal suit filed after US border Patrol refused multiple efforts by Uvalde prosecutors to interview the agents who responded to the shooting - including two who were in the tactical unit responsible for killing the gunman.