When they heard the “not guilty” verdict read aloud in the trial against Adrian Gonzales, a former Uvalde school police officer who was one of the first on scene the day of the 2022 mass shooting, several people in the courtroom broke down in tears.
Gonzales became visibly emotional as he heard the jury’s decision after nearly three weeks of trial proceedings and seven hours of deliberations.
And from the gallery, parents of the victims sobbed.
For them, there has been little justice ever since 19 children and two teachers were brutally murdered at Robb Elementary in one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history.
The trial against Gonzales was their hope for some kind of justice.
Jazmin Cazares, whose 9-year-old sister Jackie Cazares was killed in the mass shooting, shared a letter she wrote to Gonzales on Instagram. In the letter, Jazmin Cazares describes thinking about her little sister lying in her classroom “waiting to be saved.”
“I imagine her fear as she watches her friends die,” Jazmin Cazares writes. “I imagine her confusion, wondering why this is happening. I imagine her anticipation, wondering if her killer is coming back, is she next? I imagine her pain, a hole burning through her chest and a bullet ripping through her heart, the burning and pressure spreading through her body, making every breath harder than the last. I imagine her hearing the sound of people talking in the hallway and the desperation she must have felt as she waited for them to break down the door.”
Jazmin Cazares continued, writing to Gonzales directly, telling him she doesn’t think he’s a monster ― she thinks he’s a “failure.”
Brett Cross, whose 10-year-son Uziyah Garcia was among those killed, said in a TikTok posted Wednesday that the verdict doesn’t “change the truth.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that those kids waited 77 minutes,” Cross said. “It doesn’t change the fact that Adrian had that opportunity to save them and refused to do so.”
He said he’s “heartbroken” but “not shocked” at the verdict.
“It is what was to be expected,” he said. “Those jurors represented Texas, and what Texas just told everyone is our kids don’t matter. What Texas just told everyone is that your kids don’t matter. That they will always choose the cop over children.”
Sam Owens/The San Antonio Express-News via Associated Press
For weeks, through witnesses and evidence, prosecutors argued that Gonzales, who was charged with 29 counts of child endangerment, didn’t follow his active shooter training on May 24, 2022. Instead, they said, he waited outside while the shooter entered Robb Elementary and began his killing spree.
The defense argued that Gonzales had “tunnel vision” and misidentified a teacher’s aide on campus as the threat. As soon as Gonzales knew where the shooter was, his lawyers said, he entered the school and followed commands from his police chief.
A trial for Pete Arredondo, the school police chief and incident commander the day of the mass shooting, has yet to be scheduled. He faces 10 counts of child endangerment and has pleaded not guilty.
Cross said he won’t stop fighting — for his kid, the other kids and the teachers.
Gloria Cazares, the mother of Jackie Cazares, wrote on Instagram that Jackie “deserved better.”
“Jackie, you deserved better. Your friends deserved better. Your teachers deserved better. Our children deserve better,” Gloria Cazares posted Wednesday, along with a broken heart emoji.
At a news conference after the trial concluded, Gonzales briefly spoke, where he thanked God, his family and the jury. When asked if he had anything to say to the families, he said, “Not right now.”
Jesse Rizo, the uncle of Jackie Cazares, told reporters after the verdict that he’s worried the verdict tells other police officers that they can “stand by” during mass shootings and wait for “everybody to be executed.”
“Faith is fractured, but you never lose faith,” Rizo said. “You don’t lose faith because these children that are no longer with us that are at the cemetery, they can’t speak for themselves. We speak for them. We fight to the end.”
