Former Uvalde officer acquitted for response to 2022 school shooting
Posted by Sia on January 21, 2026, 10:09 pm ADMIN
Former Uvalde officer acquitted for response to 2022 school shooting
Prosecutors had portrayed the case against Adrian Gonzales as a way to deliver justice and accountability. The defense said he had been unfairly targeted.
January 21, 2026 at 9:52 p.m. EST 8 minutes ago
Former officer Adrian Gonzales was found not guilty in the first trial into law enforcement's actions during the 2022 mass killing at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. (Eric Gay/AP)
By Joanna Slater
A Texas jury on Wednesday acquitted a former Uvalde school police officer on 29 counts of child endangerment after he remained outside Robb Elementary School instead of immediately confronting the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers in their classrooms in 2022.
The verdict is a major setback for prosecutors, who portrayed the case against Adrian Gonzales as a way to deliver justice and accountability for one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.
Instead, jurors appeared to agree with Gonzales’s lawyers, who described him as unfairly singled out among the hundreds of law enforcement officers who arrived on the scene — a response that investigators said was marked by significant communication failures and poor decision-making.
Had he been convicted, the 52-year-old Gonzales faced up to two years in prison. Flowers, messages and mementos line the area outside the Uvalde elementary school even weeks after the mass killing in 2022. (Sergio Flores/FTWP)
The former officer of the six-member Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department was one of the first law enforcement personnel to respond on that sunny May day, when a teenage shooter walked into Robb Elementary through an unlocked door and opened fire inside two adjoining fourth-grade classrooms.
Nearly 400 officers ultimately converged on the school but did not breach the classroom where the gunman was located until more than an hour after he entered the building.
Prosecutors argued that Gonzales bore particular responsibility for the tragedy. They focused on his initial encounter with a frantic woman fleeing the school, who pointed toward the general location of the shooter as gunfire was heard inside, and his subsequent decision not to immediately rush in, which they said went against his active-shooter training.
However, defense lawyers noted that four other officers arrived at almost the same time and also did not enter the school right away to confront the gunman. Unlike Gonzales, three of them were in a position to see the assailant, his lawyers said. One thought he spotted the shooter outside the school and asked for permission to fire, his superior officer testified.
Emotions ran high during the three-week trial, which featured wrenching testimony from teachers who survived the shooting and parents whose children were among the murdered and wounded.
The prosecution is “trying to hijack your emotion to circumvent your reason,” defense attorney Nico LaHood told jurors. Gonzales was “easy pickings,” he said. “The man at the bottom of the totem pole.”
On the first anniversary of the tragedy at Robb Elementary, a mural on a truck in Uvalde depicts the 19 students and two teachers who lost their lives. (Sergio Flores/for The Washington Post)
Both of Gonzales’s lawyers repeatedly acknowledged the grief of families and the community. “There’s nothing that’s going to bring these kids back,” Jason Goss said during closing arguments Wednesday. “Nothing is ever going to solve that pain.”
But, he added, “You do not honor their memory by doing an injustice in their name.”
Gonzales is one of two former officers to be charged in connection with the mass killing. Pete Arredondo, the former chief of Uvalde’s school district police, is also set to stand trial on charges of child endangerment. Arredondo has pleaded not guilty.
Wednesday’s verdict marks the second time that a jury has declined to convict a school police officer for failing to stop a school shooting. In 2023, Scot Peterson, a sheriff’s deputy who worked as a security officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was acquitted of similar charges. Five years earlier, a gunman had killed 17 students, teachers and staff members at the school.
Gonzales’s trial took place before Judge Sid Harle in Corpus Christi, more than 200 miles from Uvalde, after the defense argued that a change of venue was necessary to obtain an impartial verdict. Jurors began deliberating early afternoon Wednesday.
Gonzales, in a blue suit and a tie patterned with crosses, wept and hugged one of his lawyers after the verdict was read. He had not testified in his own defense, but prosecutors played an hour-long video, recorded not long after the shooting, in which he recounted his actions at the school.
Christina Mitchell, the district attorney for Uvalde County, had told jurors that returning a guilty verdict would send a message to all law enforcement officers about their duties to members of the public and children in particular.
The children inside Robb Elementary had followed their lockdown training, staying quiet and hidden, she said, while Gonzales did not run to confront the shooter, as his training suggested.
“We’re not going to continue to teach children to rehearse their own death and not hold [officers] to the training that’s mandated by the law,” Mitchell said. “We cannot let 19 children die in vain.”
Relatives of Jacklyn Cazares, one of the children killed in the massacre, attended the trial and reacted with fury at the courthouse immediately after the verdict Wednesday night.
If memory serves, there were something like 50 officers outside in the hallways before real men, trained and brave, finally showed uo and stormed the rooms to take out the shooter.
I totally get being afraid to run into raging gunfire, but it was at CHILDREN! Innocent, unarmed, trusting, and HELPLESS children who did as they were trained. Waited quietly, hidden and silent, for adults who did NOT follow their training.
Initially, a few children escaped through windows in the classroom, aided by a teacher trying to save them. She was shot to death immediately, as were the kids standing waiting to be pushed through. If those kids had NOT been taught to hide silently instead of running out the doors or windows, MANY of them may have made it out alive because the fmgunman wasn't going to chase them or open the door knowing police were outside.
They would have barricaded the open door between classrooms so everyone in the 2nd classroom could have lived. The ones in the first classroom probably wouldn't have survived, but they didnt anyway and neither did most of the other classroom.
When children follow THEIR training and the adults supposed to do the other part fail, WTF?? WE GET UVALDE. The WORST kind of totally senseless massacre of innocents imaginable.
Sandy Hook was another horrific massacre where mere babies were shot into pieces, LITERALLY, (the details are horrific!) but it was done on mere minutes, in one classroom, and police DID their jobs there. Aside of their chickensh*t "school officer" who hid instead of going inside upon the first shot and the alarms of an intruder going off when he was outside doing whatever he was doing.
The classrooms there all immediately locked down when the first shot was fired in the hallway, but the locks failed on the door of the room he finally got into after trying several.
He could have been taken down in the hallway by a smart officer listening for his whereabouts abd shooting him from behind. No discussion. No arresting him. Shot DEAD in the hallway and stopped from doing what he did.
This story breaks my heart. I getcwhy he wasnt convicted
You can't convict him for cowardice and not do the same for a ton of other officers whonjust stood outside, terrified and listening to the teenager murder children and 2 teachers, MANY of whom WOUKD have lived if they'd gotten help sooner.
One teacher finally bled to death only minutes before they finally got some officers there with some guts and know how who took the shooter down. Her husband was an officer outside the classrooms being held back by other officers from going in.
Nothing can bring back those precious children and teachers. But SOMETHING must change!!
The shooter got in there without any trouble because someone left a door ajar to get air circulating.
So buy some fucking FANS!!! And get some officers with some guts and training on how to handle such situations!
The shooter got in there without any trouble because someone left a door ajar to get air circulating
People would be alarmed by the "heating" and "air conditioning systems" in Texas schools! If any exist, they're mounted wall units in the classrooms, and those are usually heaters. Air conditioning is very expensive, so to cut building costs...
Administrative offices may have air conditioning.
Leaving a hall or classroom door ajar to circulate air is the only way to get fresh air into the stifling classroom heat. Remember the time of year this happened? That's when Texas is becoming brutally HOT.
People looked for somebody to blame. How about beginning with school construction? I doubt if anywhere in the professional work sector would tolerate the lack of air conditioning for the work environment like students and teachers endure in Texas school classrooms.
Texas isn't the only state that does this either.You can look away from a painting, but you can't listen away from a symphony
True, but they'd been instructed NOT to do that for good reasons.
There was also reason to believe it may have been for other reasons, like quick & sneaky smoking breaks. The door was only held open with something blocking the lock, not wide open like looking for air circulation. I've always thought that was just a lie made uo by whomever was responsible and didnt want to own it afterwards.
That's not to dismiss your description of what it's like in Texas schools in hot weather. I can only imagine having lived in Florida for a bit of time way back and being in Virginia during a 100+° week visiting my best friend.
I couldnt breathe outside. We went to Gettysburg and as much as I wanted to be there to see where it all happened, I literally couldn't breathe without my asthma thingie. (FTR- I only have exercise induced or heat index induced asthma). I had to fly home 4 days early because it was so unbearable. I couldn't breathe trying to walk from the house AC to the car AC to the mall or restaurant AC without my inhaler. It was August, but still.
Fans would have done nothing much to alleviate the problem, but it would have been something anyway to move the air to cool our sweaty selves down a little. So why didnt the ancient, cheaply built schools in poor, migrant population areas like Uvalde AT LEAST have fans in the hallways and classrooms, etc? They had SIX police-trained officers assigned to their security program. They had strong security door locks for every exit. They had a security entrance to keep people out.
But not enough fans and dumbass employees who bypassed the door lock he got in.
After Columbine and a few more, the entire nation knew our schools and public buildings were too porous. The more affluent the community, the faster and better the security came. But without scanners, they couldn't stop students from bringing guns in their backpacks. So they got scanners. Many of them anyway.
Intruders getting inside without being stopped because security protocols werent enforced is why some like Columbine and Uvalde happened. Ditto Parkland's Margery Stoneham Douglas massacre where ANOTHER COWARD failed his students and forever shamed himself!
They should all be BRANDED as cowards. Wasn't there an old TV show with Chuck Connors unfairly branded that way? Id be okay with branding the proven cowards on their foreheads and hands. If they wear hats abd gloves, then brand their cheeks. They were acquitted of illegal actions, as the law says they must be. However, they are COWARDS who shoukd never be allowed to pretend otherwise.
My final statements were quite harsh, especially for me, but someone PAID to protect
When the Texas desert air heats up, air temperature climbs over 100f. Classroom temperature may rise to 120f or more. Admin gives their directive from their AIR CONDITIONED office.
Put children in that situation for many hours of the day and behavioral issues become impossible and untenable.
The Uvalde disaster is a combination of perfect storm errors all the way around, and nobody is shouldering responsibility for anything.
One of my college roommates lost his son at Columbine. I knew the choir director there as well, and had many insightful discussions about what went wrong. The two boys, Klebold and Harris were badly bullied by jocks and their girlfriends, and they targeted those students when they went on their spree. Those students were favorites of admin, and got away with unchecked torment and bullying. Klebord and Harris were members of a counterculture at the school called the Trenchcoat Mafia. They were frequent targets of the jock culture. Pleas for help from admin were ignored. Finally Klebord and Harris decided to take matters into their own hands. The rest is history.
Didn't hear about any of this on news? The story media ran with is what admin wanted.You can look away from a painting, but you can't listen away from a symphony
I heard about that on the news. It wasn't silenced.
It just didnt change anything about what they did. They didnt only murder those who tormented them and their plan included explosives to kill more, but they didnt go off.
I dug at preventing a "Columbine," or "Uvalde." Not mitigating them.
Maybe, just maybe the problem is unsolvable. It is a very narrow set of factors that would depend on mitigation being in the right place at the right time. That has to intercept a catastrophe in the wrong place at the wrong time. What are the chances? You can look away from a painting, but you can't listen away from a symphony
Teaching children kindness and generosity as well as helping them develop self-confidence young makes a difference down the road. If kids dont learn and practice those things from kindergarten on, then it's awfully difficult to get them there as teenagers.
I think that the majority of teens only go along with or remain silent when bullies target others out of FEAR and a lack of self-confidence. Most feel badly but don't take a stand for that reason.
My children's schools in MA during their primary years emphasized anti-bullying programs modeled after anti-Columbine literature, but all my kids were bullied to a degree, but we'd armed them with self-confidence, kindness, and forgiveness.
Once, my Jaimelynn responded to the bully by offering sympathy for whatever demons in his life made him strike out at others who couldnt fight back. She began telling her classmates that Bradley obviously had trouble at home (which it turned out that he did) and to be nice to him, say hi, treat him like a friend, and just walk away when he'd strike out at someone so he'd get the message that being nice gave him friends, being a jerk made them walk away.
Eventually, he told Jaimelynn that he was being sexually abused by his father. She told us and we told the school. Police were involved and sure enough, the father was molesting all of them.
Later on, in high school, after we'd moved to NH, she witnessed a boy being bullied by a bunch of kids, with the ring leader being much stronger and bigger than the others. She confronted him and told him he was a jerk for that and shamed the others who stood by adding to it or saying nothing.
She was much smaller, quite pretty, VERY popular and the bully couldnt silence her, especially when several kids got behind her and agreed with her, making it clear that they didnt like the bulkying either. The boy stormed off. It happened more times with the same reactions so eventually the boy stopped bullying in school anyway.
We have no idea why he was doing it aince she never connected with him, but it seemed that he was bigger than the rest but ashamed that he couldn't read very well and appeared to be dyslexic. (He got help with that and a lot changed with him).
Jaimelynn passed those teachings on to her 2 daughters, Evelyn and Alana. Evelyn is the tiniest little beauty and quite smart. She doesn't like bullies either. In kindergarten at lunch the first week, she saw kids teasing one girl who wore worn clothes and "wasn't cool". They made her sit alone to eat, jeering that no one liked her or ever would. Of course she cried alone at her table.
Evelyn stood up, took her lunch, and went to sit with Emily, announcing loudly that she very much liked Emily (who sat near her in class) and said that they were friends. Three years later, they are still best friends.
Now, Evelyn and Emily are two of the most liked kids in 2nd grade along with being amonst the smartest too. Both of them dont suffer bullies. Nor do their classmates. Learning early makes a difference! Asking and listening to our children does too!
My point?
1- Early teaching of our children about kindness towards others MATTERS!
2- Watching for signs of bullying in school and after school to be able to intervene and help BOTH the bully and the victim MATTERS.
3- Anti-bullying programs MATTER.
Situations like that always involve victims and their tormentors. Children are not born MEAN even as they are born self-centered (for survival reasons). They learn it from somewhere. There are a multitude of reasons behind why someone bullies others so nothing can be assumed. It takes involved, caring teachers and parents who look for the signs and get involved quickly to stop it and help the children involved. If not because they "truly care", then to stop another Columbine, Uvalde, Sandy Hook, and so on. All involved hurting kids who struck out from their own pain to destroy other people's lives.
If more parents gave their children that kind of attention, support, and dedicated time, many behavioral problems seen in the classroom would just about disappear. You can look away from a painting, but you can't listen away from a symphony
I know. I cringe when I see parents who don't listen, don't get involved, and fail to see
that their own child is hurting. The child was clearly never nurtured and doesn't feel a sense of safety to tell their parents what is happening to them. That is just criminal parenting in my book.
Not making time for them or giving them a safe space to get real is their fault. Not their child's.
At least not until the child acts out in deadly ways that kill or maim others because no one ever paid them enough attention to find out what they were going through alone.
on January 21, 2026, 10:09 pm
