SEATTLE - More than two years after the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting, families and friends of the victims faced the two officers charged with abandoning and failing to protect the children who were killed and wounded that day.
Relatives of the Uvalde shooting received officer Adrian Gonzales with shouts of "Coward! Coward!" as he attended a procedural hearing in relation to his child abandonment charges.
The encounter, which took place outside the jail courthouse, was the first time that families of the victims have been in close proximity to both Pete Arredondo and Gonzales since the shooting.
Brett Cross, father of Uziyah Garcia, one of the children who was killed, was among those attending the hearing and in the crowd shouting towards the officers. "Just to see him [Arredondo] sitting there so smugly, like he didn't do anything wrong was upsetting," Cross said.
The delayed response from Uvalde's law enforcement has been widely condemned as a massive failure, with nearly 400 officers waiting 77 minutes before confronting the gunman in a classroom filled with dead and wounded children and teachers. The response included nearly 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 91 state police officials, as well as school and city police.
Partly due to the delayed response from law enforcement, the gunman at the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting ended up taking the lives of 19 students and two teachers, leaving 17 others injured.
As law enforcement officers waited, children were dialing 911 and calling their parents asking for help. Calls and footage released last month include a 911 call from fourth-grader Khloie Torres, who pleaded law enforcement to hurry up in their response from inside the classrooms. "Please hurry, there's a lot of dead bodies," Torres said. "Please, I'm going to die."
Despite being charged in June with felony counts of abandoning or endangering a child during the response at Robb Elementary, Gonzales' attorney told reporters outside of the jail courthouse that investigative reports on the shooting by the Justice Department and the Texas House did not suggest prosecuting his client.
Former Uvalde school district police chief Pete Arredondo was also in court because his attorney was trying to have his indictment dismissed, arguing he did not have a legal duty to perform his job well.
Arredondo's attorney asked for time to read the more than 3,500 pages of evidence and another hearing was set for Dec. 19.
Ruben Torres, father of Khloie Torres, was among those who attended the hearing. He lashed out at 38th Judicial District Attorney Christina Mitchell, saying she was not doing her job and calling her "lazy" and "unprofessional" because some documents and reports were not yet complete, as well as the continued slow pace of the case.
Both Gonzales and Arredondo have repeatedly pleaded not guilty to the multiple charges of child abandonment and endangerment, while a Texas state trooper in Uvalde who had been suspended was reinstated to his job earlier in August.
As families of the Uvalde shooting await for Gonzales and Arredondo's cases to be resolved, they reached a $2 million settlement with the city in May that includes the promise of higher standards and better training for local police.
The families reached in May reached a settlement with the city but at the same time sued over 90 state police officers who were part of the force's botched response to the situation, Arredondo and González among them.
The settlement amounts to $2 million and also includes the promise of higher standards and better training for local police.
© 2024 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
