(Houston) An American court on Wednesday acquitted a former police officer, tried for inaction during the 2022 killings in a Texas elementary school, in Uvalde, where two teachers and 19 children lost their lives.
Published yesterday at
This massacre, perpetrated on May 24, 2022 by an 18-year-old man, Salvador Ramos, armed with an assault rifle, remains today the worst school killing committed in the United States in around fifteen years.
It marked the American collective memory with a hot iron, because of the young age of the dead children – nine years old for some – but also because of the slowness of the police in reacting.
Because despite the mobilization of 376 agents from multiple forces – local sheriff, state police and even municipal police – it was necessary to wait 77 minutes and the arrival of a specialized unit for the shooter to be shot dead.
PHOTO MARK FELIX, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
The killing caused the death of two teachers and 19 children.
Uvalde School District Police Officer Adrian Gonzales was among the first officers on the scene. He was accused of endangering the lives of others, particularly children, by not having “initiated (the fight), distracted or delayed the shooter”.
“We, the jury, find the defendant Adrian Gonzales not guilty,” Judge Sid Harle said at the hearing in Corpus Christi, some 200 miles from Uvalde, after several hours of deliberations.
Victims’ families expressed frustration over the acquittal – a rare record of indictment of law enforcement for its response to a mass shooting.
“They let the children down again,” reacted to the press Javier Cazares, father of Jackie Cazares, a schoolgirl who died in the attack.
Former Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo is facing charges of abandonment and child endangerment. He will be judged separately.
In January 2024, the US Department of Justice recognized a “cascade of failures” in the response of law enforcement.
