TX v. Adrian Gonzales Day 1 - Justice Breakdown

Those are the words of children. Fourth graders. Nine, ten, eleven years old. Calling 911 from inside classrooms 111 and 112 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. They whispered into phones while a gunman reloaded. While their classmates bled out on the floor around them. While their teachers lay dead at the front of the room.

And while they called for help, nearly 400 law enforcement officers gathered in the hallways and parking lots outside. Body camera footage would later show some of them checking their phones. Sanitizing their hands. Retreating from the sound of gunfire.

Today, more than three and a half years later, a jury in Corpus Christi, Texas sat down to answer a question that cuts to the core of how we understand police responsibility in this country. Can a law enforcement officer be held criminally liable for failing to act while children are being slaughtered?

Adrian Gonzales was the first officer to arrive at Robb Elementary on May 24, 2022. According to prosecutors, he heard the gunshots. A teacher told him what the shooter was wearing and which direction he was heading. He was no more than 200 feet from the gunman. And according to the state, he failed to engage, distract, or delay the shooter before that man walked into those classrooms and murdered 19 children and two teachers.

The defense says that's not what happened. They say Gonzales drove toward the danger while other officers stayed back. They say he was confused by a chaotic situation that started with a car wreck, not a school shooting. They say he acted on the information he had, even when that information was wrong.

Today was Day 1. Opening statements. Four witnesses. And already, something unexpected happened. The prosecution's own eyewitness may have just helped the defense.

This is the first criminal case arising from the law enforcement response to Uvalde. It is historic. It is unprecedented. And it is deeply, profoundly personal for the families sitting in that courtroom who buried their children and have waited over 1,300 days for someone to answer for what happened.

I'm Steven M. Askin II. This is Justice Is A Process. We're not here to convict or acquit. We're here to watch whether the system does what it's supposed to do: prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt while protecting the constitutional rights of everyone involved. Including the defendant.

Before the jury ever walked in, there was a fight. Defense attorney Jason Goss stood up and asked Judge Sid Harle to exclude the autopsy photographs. All of them. Every single picture of every child who was killed that day.

Look, I've been watching trials for years. I've seen prosecutors use crime scene photos to devastating effect. Photos of victims are powerful evidence. They show the jury what happened. They make the crime real. But there's a line. The law says evidence can be excluded if its prejudicial effect substantially outweighs its probative value. In plain English: if showing the jury something is more likely to make them angry than to help them understand the facts, the judge can keep it out.

Goss made a smart argument. He said the defense would stipulate that the children were killed. They would stipulate to the injuries. They would let the medical examiner testify about manner of death. There's no dispute that Salvador Ramos murdered those children. The only question is whether Adrian Gonzales is criminally responsible for failing to stop him.

And those photos? Goss told the judge he'd never seen anything more prejudicial in his career. He's right. I haven't either. Judge Harle looked at every single one. You could see it on his face when he finished.

But here's the thing. The prosecution argued that the photos aren't just about proving the children died. They're about proving the danger was imminent. Prosecutor Bill Turner made a point that will echo through this entire trial: as each child was shot, every other child in that room was placed in greater danger. The horror of what happened to one victim is evidence of the threat to the survivors.

Judge Harle denied the motion to exclude. For now. He said the probative value outweighs the prejudicial effect. But he reserved the right to sustain objections to specific photos as they're offered. Translation: some of those pictures may never make it to the jury. The judge is going to make that call one by one.

There was another ruling that matters. The defense asked that the prosecution not be allowed to call the children "victims of the defendant." Goss argued they are victims, absolutely. Victims of Salvador Ramos. But calling them Adrian Gonzales's victims assumes the very thing the jury is supposed to decide. The judge agreed. The state can call them victims. They cannot call them his victims. Not until the verdict.

That might sound like semantics. It's not. Language shapes how juries think. Every time a prosecutor says "his victims," they're telling the jury Gonzales is guilty before they've proven anything. The judge shut that down.

Then the jury came in. Twelve jurors and four alternates. Eleven women and five men. They'd been selected the day before from a pool of Nueces County residents, 200 miles away from Uvalde. The defense had successfully argued for a change of venue. There's no way Adrian Gonzales gets a fair trial in Uvalde. Everyone there knows someone who lost a child. Everyone there has an opinion. Here in Corpus Christi, the jury might actually be able to judge this case on the evidence.

Judge Harle read them their instructions. Don't talk to anyone about the case. Don't research it online. Don't visit the scene. Don't let anyone discuss it with you. These instructions are standard. But in a case this public, with this much media coverage, following them will be almost impossible.

Then the prosecutor stood up and walked to the podium. It was time for opening statements.

"It was a warm day at Robb Elementary. The fourth graders lined up throughout the morning and gathered at the cafeteria with their parents to receive certificates of achievement. It was a day of celebration."

He walked the jury through that morning. Awards ceremony. Kids getting honor roll certificates and good citizenship awards. Mothers taking photos with their children. Photos that would be the last ones ever taken.

Then the timeline. 11:30 a.m. A truck crashes through a rail and into a drainage ditch near the school. Gilbert Lemones, a funeral home worker across the street, goes to check on the driver. That's when the man with the rifle climbs out.

Turner described what happened next in simple, devastating terms. The shooter jumped the fence. Walked deliberately across the school grounds. Started firing. And Stephanie Hail, a teacher on the playground, heard those shots and did what any teacher would do. She got her kids to safety. She told them to hide. They armed themselves with scissors.

Then Turner got to the heart of the case. Melody Flores, another teacher, was outside when the shooting started. She ran toward the gunfire to warn kids to get inside. She came face to face with the shooter. He fired at her. She turned to run, tripped, fell in the dirt. And when she got up, there was Adrian Gonzales.

Turner's voice got harder. "She says, 'He's over there. He's wearing black. He's in the teacher's parking lot.' As shots are ringing out. This is not confusion. He gets on the radio and says shots fired. He's wearing black. He's in the parking lot. He knows where he is."

But Adrian Gonzales remained at the south side of the building. The gunman walked up the west side, firing into classroom windows. Gonzales remained. The gunman entered the building. Gonzales remained. The slaughter began. Gonzales remained.

Turner asked the question that will define this trial: "Was Adrien a rookie? Was this his first day on the job?" No. Gonzales was a 10-year veteran. He'd been at the Uvalde Police Department for a decade before moving to the school district. He had thousands of hours of training. And two months before the shooting, he helped teach an active shooter training course. The name of one session? "Stop the Killing: Solo Response to Active Shooter Events."

He taught other officers what to do. Then, according to the prosecution, he didn't do it himself.

Turner ended with the stakes. "When a child is in danger and calls 911, we have the right to expect a response."

Jason Goss started with something prosecutors couldn't argue with. "The monster who hurt those children is dead."

His voice broke. "I mean it's emotion. I could understand why Bill when he talked to you, I could understand why he had emotion. I can't talk to you without it either. This is one of the worst things ever happened in our country. There's only been a few like this. This many. This young. Innocent."

The defense theory is about confusion. And they built it carefully. First: the car crash. This is the only school shooting in American history that began with someone wrecking into a drainage ditch. Goss explained what that meant to responding officers. They heard "accident" on the radio. Then "gun." They assumed someone had committed a crime and was fleeing. Bailouts, he called them. Uvalde has about 50 incidents a month involving people fleeing accidents near the border. This looked like one of those.

Nobody thought it was a school shooting. Not at first. Even the school didn't go into lockdown immediately. Why would they? A car crash in a ditch across the street doesn't mean someone's about to murder children.

Then Goss went to the map. He showed the jury where everything happened. The funeral home. The ditch. The fence. The parking lot. The school buildings. And critically: where Adrian Gonzales was versus where the shooter was.

According to Goss, Gonzales drove through an open gate and headed toward someone he saw in the distance. A figure in the dirt. He thought it might be the gunman. It was Melody Flores, the teacher who had tripped and fallen. He drove straight to her. Got out. Started asking what was happening.

Five seconds after he got out of his car, the shooter started firing into the side of the school building. Not at Gonzales. Not anywhere Gonzales could see. On the other side of the building.

"This isn't a man waiting around," Goss said. "This isn't a man failing to act. It's a man who is confused. It's a man who has made assumptions that are understandable, that turned out to be wrong. But he was trying. He was going towards that danger."

Here's what the defense wants the jury to understand: Adrian Gonzales never saw Salvador Ramos. Not once. Not ever. He heard gunshots. He got information from Melody Flores. But by the time he radioed that the shooter was on the west side of the building in the teacher's parking lot, the shooter was already inside. One second. The radio transmission came one second after Ramos entered the building.

Gonzales didn't know that. He couldn't know that. The prosecution says he should have run to the corner of the building and engaged. The defense says that corner was 45 seconds away across open ground with no cover, and Gonzales had no idea where the shooter actually was.

Then Goss played a card that caught everyone's attention. He pointed at the map and showed three other officers who arrived at the corner near the accident scene. Officers Mendula, Saucedo, and Sergeant Coronado. They got there before Gonzales even parked. They had rifles. They had a direct line of sight to the door the shooter entered.

One of them asked for permission to shoot. "Serge, can I shoot?" No response came. By the time they looked back, the shooter was inside.

Those officers aren't on trial. Adrian Gonzales is. Goss wants the jury to ask why.

He ended with a warning. "What they are going to do is show you the worst things that you've ever seen. You will not come out of this trial the same person in your heart. And what the prosecution wants you to do is see that, see those horrible things, get so mad at Adrian that you convict him."

He looked at the jury. "The monster who did this to these kids is dead. He doesn't get this justice. So now they're looking for somebody to put in that chair."

Nico LaHood, the lead defense attorney, stood up to finish. He went through the timeline second by second. He hammered on the radio transmissions. He emphasized what officers knew and didn't know in real time. And he made a promise: "At the end of this trial, we're going to come back to you and humbly ask you to consider the law and the facts and properly apply them. And we're going to be requesting and asking for a verdict of not guilty."

Gilbert Lemones is a full-time pastor who works part-time at Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home. On May 24, 2022, he was coming out of the embalming room when someone said there was an accident across the street. He did what any decent person would do. He went to help.

He was on the phone with 911 as he walked across the street. Reporting an accident. Then a man climbed out of the wrecked truck with what looked like a black fence post. Lemones called out, "Hey, are you okay?"

Lemones ran. Bullets grazed him. He made it back to the funeral home and watched through the window as the shooter jumped the fence, threw a duffel bag across, and walked toward the school. Not ran. Walked. "Completely very nonchalantly, like no rush, no nothing."

The 911 calls were played for the jury. You could hear the terror in Lemones's voice as he watched the shooter walk toward the school. "Oh my god, he's jumping into the schoolyard. He's running towards the school. Oh my god, he's wearing black. There's kids out there. There's kids out there. Please."

The jury heard him praying. "In the name of Jesus, Lord, please protect those children. Oh God, please protect those children."

Lemones testified about seeing a white car drive through the school gate. He said the shooter was between two vehicles in the parking lot at that time. The white car drove fast. Really fast. Lemones said whoever was in that car couldn't have seen the shooter because of where he was standing.

Defense attorney Nico LaHood stood up for cross-examination. He was gentle. Respectful. And devastating.

He got Lemones to admit he was under tremendous stress that day. Understandable. He got Lemones to admit he told 911 the shooter was "running" toward the school when the video clearly shows him walking. Stress affects perception.

Then LaHood asked about the white car. "So Adrian Gonzalez was driving really fast towards the school. Would you agree?"

The prosecution's eyewitness just testified that the defendant drove "really fast" toward the danger. That's not what a coward does. That's not what someone who's failing to act does.

But LaHood wasn't done. He showed Lemones the funeral home video. There were three other officers at the corner by the accident scene. Officers who arrived before Gonzales even got to the school. Officers with rifles and cars for cover.

Lemones had never seen that video. He didn't know those officers were there. He'd never testified about them because no one had ever shown him.

"Those three officers, they stopped on that corner. You saw that on video. You also know that you were on the phone telling 911 the severity of the circumstance. And you were sharing that information before those three officers showed up. And you have no personal knowledge why those officers stopped there."

LaHood then got to the most important point. Lemones told an officer exactly which door the shooter entered. He was on the phone with 911, watching it happen, telling them "he went through that door." That officer did not breach the door. Did not follow the shooter in.

"You told an officer the exact door the shooter entered and that officer did not follow him in?"

"And it wasn't the same officer, Adrian Gonzales, that drove behind the school towards the danger?"

The prosecution's first witness just confirmed the defense's core argument. Adrian Gonzales drove toward the danger. Other officers, who had better information and better positioning, did not. Those other officers aren't on trial. This case is about Adrian Gonzales. And on Day 1, the state's own witness made him look more heroic than negligent.

Shay has been in law enforcement since 1998. He's a firearms instructor. He does crime scene investigation and shooting reconstruction. He was one of the first rangers on scene at Robb Elementary and photographed the shooter's truck in the ditch.

His testimony was mostly about evidence. The AR-15-style rifle found in a duffel bag outside the truck. The magazines loaded with .223 ammunition. Six magazines in the bag. More inside the truck. Each magazine holds 20 to 30 rounds. Do the math. This shooter came to kill as many people as possible.

The prosecutor walked Shay through the photographs. The wrecked truck in the ditch. The rifle in the black bag. The magazines lined up on the ground. The spent casings inside the vehicle. The cell phone with notifications rolling in as the shooter walked toward the school.

One photograph showed the phone's lock screen. Messages were coming in. "They killed them and he killed his grandma. He shot her 24 times. He's going to hell."

Before driving to the school, Salvador Ramos shot his grandmother in the face. She survived. She ran to neighbors for help while he took her truck.

The prosecution used Shay to establish the firepower the shooter brought. This wasn't a handgun. This was a weapon designed for war. Hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Multiple magazines. The capacity to fire continuously without reloading for extended periods.

But the defense saw an opportunity on cross-examination. Gary Hill, one of the defense attorneys, focused on the difference between the weapons. Gonzales was armed with a Glock pistol. A 9mm handgun. The shooter had a .223 rifle that can fire accurately at 200 yards. That can penetrate body armor. That turns a hallway into a kill zone.

Hill walked Shay through ballistics. A rifle round is more powerful. Faster. More dangerous. A standard bulletproof vest won't stop it. You'd need ceramic plates. Special equipment. The kind of equipment that tactical teams carry.

"More powerful. So therefore more dangerous. More power equals more velocity. More velocity equals more speed. More speed means more danger?"

The defense is laying groundwork. They want the jury to understand that sending a man with a handgun against a shooter with an AR-15 is not a fair fight. It's not cowardice to take cover when you're outgunned. It's survival.

Shay had interviewed staff members after the shooting. Teachers. Administrators. The principal. And what he found was disturbing. There was a pattern at Robb Elementary of staff defeating the door locks. Using magnets to hold doors open. Leaving exterior doors unlocked. The policy was that doors should be locked. The practice was that they often weren't.

"Did you know that one of the door locks wasn't even working? That it had been reported to maintenance and nothing had been done about it?"

The defense is widening the frame. This wasn't just about one officer's decisions. This was systemic failure. Doors that should have been locked weren't. Locks that should have worked didn't. The shooter walked into that building because a door was open. If that door had been locked, he would have had to breach it. That takes time. Time that might have saved lives.

Duck is a captain with DPS now, but in 2022 he was part of the crime scene investigation team. He was assigned to process the shooter's truck the morning after the massacre. There was a problem: it rained overnight. The ditch filled with water. Evidence was submerged.

The rangers put on rubber boots and searched by feel. They recovered the duffel bag with the rifle and six loaded magazines. They found spent casings in the water and inside the truck. Over three days, they recovered four spent casings total from in and around the vehicle.

This testimony was short. Technical. It established chain of custody for the evidence. But it also showed how chaotic the scene was, even for investigators. Evidence submerged in muddy water. Rangers feeling around blindly for shell casings. Crime scene processing that took days instead of hours.

The fourth witness was Stephanie Hail. And her testimony ended Day 1 in the most unexpected way possible.

Hail was a third-grade teacher at Robb Elementary. On May 24, 2022, it was awards day. She'd taken her students to the ceremony that morning. Some went home with their parents afterward. About 12 remained. She took them to the playground on the south side of the school for extra recess.

That's when she heard what she thought was a dumpster being emptied. That loud metallic bang you hear when the garbage truck lifts the container. She thought it was strange because they usually do that in the morning.

Then she heard what sounded like fireworks. Then Coach Gonzalez grabbed his radio and started yelling for everyone to get inside.

Hail got her kids to the closest building. A second-grade classroom. She stood outside the door to make sure every child got in. Then she went inside and helped calm the younger students who couldn't stay quiet. She army-crawled across the floor and did breathing exercises with them. Trace your hand. Breathe in as you go up each finger. Breathe out as you go down.

The teachers tied an extension cord around the door frame as extra security because they weren't sure if the lock worked. They armed themselves with scissors. The children saw the adults with scissors and grabbed safety scissors of their own.

"I didn't even notice until we got to the parking lot," Hail said. "All the kids had scissors."

Hail's testimony was emotional. She described waiting in that classroom, not knowing if the shooter would come through the door. Keeping kids calm while sirens wailed outside. Eventually being evacuated by law enforcement. The confusion of getting on buses, going in circles, learning the high school was on lockdown so they couldn't go there. Finally ending up at the civic center where parents were waiting to find out if their children were alive.

Jason Goss asked about Hail's interview with Texas Rangers four days after the shooting. She'd described the day's events. The sounds she heard. The lockdown. But in that interview, she never said she saw the shooter. She never said she saw a man dressed in black with long hair and a gun on the south side of the building.

Goss asked her to review her original statement. The court took a recess. When they came back, it was worse. The prosecution acknowledged that Hail had mentioned seeing a man in black during their pretrial preparation. But she'd never told the rangers. She'd never testified to it before the grand jury. The location she was now giving, the south side of the building near the sidewalk, was information the defense had never been provided.

The defense called the prosecutor to the stand. Christina Mitchell, the DA, testified under oath that her notes from the pretrial interview contained no mention of the specific location Hail was now describing. Investigator Ricardo Garcia confirmed he was present at the interview and Hail never mentioned seeing the shooter at that location.

This is a Brady issue. The prosecution has a constitutional obligation to turn over evidence that might help the defense. If Hail told prosecutors something new about seeing the shooter, something she'd never said before, the defense should have been told. They weren't.

The judge continued the trial until Thursday to deal with the issue. Stephanie Hail will return to the stand. The defense will get to finish their cross-examination. But Day 1 ended not with powerful testimony, but with a legal problem that could affect the entire case.

What the Jury Saw

Put yourself in that jury box for a moment. Eleven women and five men who'd never heard the 911 calls. Never seen the funeral home video. Never watched a man with a rifle walk toward an elementary school while children played on the playground.

The prosecution painted a picture of a day of celebration turned to horror. Awards ceremony. Proud parents. Happy children. Then gunshots. Then slaughter. The emotional power of that narrative is overwhelming. When Gilbert Lemones's 911 call played, with him praying for the children, crying out to Jesus for protection, you could feel the weight in that courtroom.

These jurors are human beings. They have children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews. They've dropped kids off at elementary schools. They've seen those same awards ceremonies in their own communities. When Bill Turner described fourth graders watching movies in dark classrooms, eating snacks, enjoying the last days of school, every parent in that jury box felt something tighten in their chest.

And then the 911 audio. Lemones's voice cracking as he watches the shooter walk toward the school. "There's kids out there. There's kids out there. Please." The desperation. The helplessness. You can hear him praying. "In the name of Jesus, Lord, please protect those children."

That's what the prosecution wanted. They wanted the jury to feel what the community felt that day. The terror. The incomprehension. The moment when normal life shattered into something unimaginable. They wanted the jury angry. They wanted them looking for someone to blame.

But the jury also saw something the prosecution probably didn't want them to see. They saw that Adrian Gonzales drove fast toward the school while other officers stayed at the corner. They heard the state's own witness confirm it. They learned that Gonzales couldn't have seen the shooter from where he was. They heard that other officers with rifles and direct lines of sight didn't follow the shooter in.

The defense's cross-examination of Lemones was surgical. LaHood didn't attack the witness. He didn't suggest Lemones was lying or exaggerating. He simply asked questions that revealed facts the prosecution hadn't emphasized. That Gonzales drove "really fast" toward the danger. That other officers stopped at the corner and didn't follow. That Lemones told an officer exactly which door the shooter entered and that officer didn't pursue.

Watch the jury when that testimony came out. LaHood is asking a grieving eyewitness to confirm that the defendant acted more aggressively than other officers at the scene. And the witness agrees. "Correct." Over and over. "Correct."

Then came the revelation that Lemones had never seen the video showing three officers at the corner. He didn't know they existed until today. The prosecution had a witness who watched the whole thing from his window, and they apparently never showed him footage that would have given him a fuller picture. The defense did.

And they watched the prosecution's final witness of the day fall apart on cross-examination. Testimony that changed from four days after the shooting to the grand jury to the stand. New details appearing in trial that weren't in any prior statement. The defense attorney calling the prosecutor herself as a witness to establish that these new details were never disclosed.

That's not a good look. When your witness gives new testimony on the stand that contradicts their prior statements, juries notice. When the defense has to put the prosecutor on the stand to prove they weren't given information they should have received, juries really notice.

Day 1 was supposed to belong to the prosecution. Opening statements are your chance to frame the case. Your first witnesses are supposed to establish your narrative. The state wanted the jury to see an officer who failed. Who stood by while children died. Who had the training and didn't use it.

Instead, the jury saw chaos. Confusion. Multiple officers making decisions in real time with incomplete information. A school with broken locks. A system that failed at every level. A prosecution witness who confirmed the defendant drove toward danger. And a final witness whose testimony was so inconsistent the judge had to continue the trial for two days to sort it out.

The prosecution has 28 more counts to prove. They have more witnesses. They have the body camera footage. They have Adrian Gonzales's own interview where he said he "locked in" on Melody Flores and never saw the gunman. They have his active shooter training records from two months before.

But they also have a problem. Their first witness just made the defendant look like the one officer who actually drove toward the danger. And their fourth witness ended the day with a credibility crisis that will hang over her testimony when she returns Thursday.

The jury will go home tonight thinking about what they saw. The question is: what will they remember most? The horror of those 911 calls? Or the chaos of a response where everyone made mistakes and only one person is on trial?

Why This Matters

No police officer in Texas has ever been criminally prosecuted under the child endangerment statute for failing to act during an active shooter event. The law was designed to prevent parents from abandoning children. From leaving kids in hot cars. From exposing them to drug use or domestic violence. It was never intended to apply to a police officer's tactical decisions during a mass shooting.

That's what makes this unprecedented. The prosecution is trying something new. They're arguing that a school district police officer, specifically hired to protect children, has a legal duty to engage an active shooter. And that failure to fulfill that duty is a crime.

Let's look at what the law actually says. Texas Penal Code Section 22.041 makes it a crime to intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence abandon or endanger a child. The statute talks about placing a child in imminent danger of death, bodily injury, or physical or mental impairment.

The prosecution's theory is that Gonzales, as a school district police officer, had a duty to protect the children of Robb Elementary. By failing to engage the shooter, he placed them in danger. The indictment specifically alleges he failed to engage, distract, or delay the shooter. Failed to follow his active shooter training. Failed to advance toward the gunfire.

But here's the legal problem. The statute requires intent. "Intentionally or knowingly" is the highest standard. "Recklessly or with criminal negligence" is lower but still requires awareness. Did Gonzales intend to place children in danger? Did he know his inaction would endanger them? Or was he confused about what was happening and where the shooter was?

The defense says that's exactly the issue. Gonzales didn't know where the shooter was. He got information from Melody Flores, but that information was wrong. She told him the shooter was in the building when he was still outside. She said he had a handgun when he had a rifle. She pointed toward the parking lot when the shooter was already inside.

Can you intentionally or knowingly endanger someone based on information that turns out to be incorrect? The defense says no. They say Gonzales acted on what he knew, even though what he knew was wrong.

The defense says that's not what the law means. They say you can't hold an officer criminally responsible for split-second decisions made under fire. They say the statute requires intentional or knowing conduct, not confusion or fear. They say applying this law to police response creates an impossible standard that will make officers hesitate or refuse to respond at all.

Think about what the prosecution is asking. They want a jury to convict a police officer for not being brave enough. For not running toward gunfire fast enough. For taking cover instead of advancing. That's a high bar. Juries are generally sympathetic to officers who make mistakes under stress. They understand that real-world situations don't look like training exercises.

Active shooter training teaches you to run toward the gunfire. Stop the killing. That's the modern doctrine. But training also teaches situational awareness. Cover and concealment. Communication. You don't just charge blindly into a situation you don't understand. At least, that's not what they taught before Columbine changed everything.

The prosecution will argue Gonzales had the training. He literally taught the course two months before. "Stop the Killing: Solo Response to Active Shooter Events." He knew what to do. He didn't do it.

The defense will argue that training happens in controlled environments. You know where the threat is. You have time to prepare. The real world is chaos. Confusion. Incomplete information. You make decisions in seconds that people will judge for years.

But think about what the defense is asking too. They want a jury to accept that 77 minutes was reasonable. That nearly 400 officers standing in hallways while children bled out was acceptable. That the system worked the way it was supposed to work. That no one is criminally responsible for the response failure, even though every investigation has concluded the response was catastrophic.

My father defended people against the government for 23 years. He was twice prosecuted himself. The first time for refusing to violate attorney-client privilege. The second time for teaching people their constitutional rights from a coffee shop. He taught me that the criminal justice system exists to protect individuals from the power of the state. The burden of proof is on the government. The presumption of innocence is sacred. Those protections apply to everyone, including police officers accused of crimes.

But he also taught me that when the system fails the vulnerable, when children are killed because adults didn't do their jobs, the law should have an answer. The question is whether this is the right answer. Whether charging one officer for the failures of hundreds serves justice or just gives the public someone to blame.

There's only one direct precedent. In 2023, former Broward County Deputy Scot Peterson was acquitted in Florida for his response to the Parkland school shooting. Peterson stayed outside the building while 17 people were killed inside. The jury deliberated for 20 hours and found him not guilty.

But there are differences. Peterson was outside the building. Gonzales went inside. Peterson never heard the shooter's location. Gonzales was told by Melody Flores where the shooter was heading. Peterson hadn't just taught active shooter training. Gonzales had, two months earlier.

The prosecution is betting those differences matter. The defense is betting they don't. The jury will decide.

My father spent his career defending people against the power of the state. He taught me that the presumption of innocence isn't just a legal principle. It's a moral commitment. We don't convict people because we're angry. We don't convict them because something terrible happened and someone needs to pay. We convict them when the evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that they committed the specific crime charged.

That's the question here. Not whether the response to Uvalde was a failure. Everyone agrees it was. Not whether children died who might have been saved. They did. The question is whether Adrian Gonzales, specifically, committed the crime of child endangerment under Texas law.

The prosecution has to prove he intentionally or knowingly placed children in danger. That's a high standard. "I was confused" might be a defense. "I was scared" might be a defense. "I didn't know where the shooter was" might be a defense.

We're going to watch whether the state can meet its burden. We're going to watch whether the defense can create reasonable doubt. And we're going to watch whether justice, whatever that means in this case, gets done.

The Bigger Picture

This trial is about Adrian Gonzales. But it's also about something larger. It's about what we expect from police officers. What we're willing to accept when they fail. And who bears responsibility when the system breaks down.

Nearly 400 officers responded to Robb Elementary that day. Two of them are facing criminal charges. Adrian Gonzales and former Chief Pete Arredondo, whose trial date hasn't been set. That's it. Two out of 400.

Think about that number. Four hundred law enforcement officers. Local police. State troopers. Border Patrol. Federal agents. They came from across the region. They filled the hallways. They surrounded the building. Body camera footage shows them standing. Waiting. Some checking phones. One applying hand sanitizer.

The Department of Justice spent months investigating and produced a 600-page report calling the response a "cascading failure of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training." Attorney General Merrick Garland said publicly that lives would have been saved if officers had followed standard active shooter protocols.

The Texas House Committee reached the same conclusion. So did the Texas Department of Public Safety internal review. Every investigation found the same thing: systemic failure at every level.

No one established command. No one coordinated the response. Officers from different agencies couldn't communicate because their radios weren't compatible. There was no master key to the classroom doors. Tactical equipment that might have helped was sitting in trucks outside.

And the children called 911. Over and over. Begging for help. Telling dispatchers there were people dead and dying in the classroom. Those calls were relayed to officers in the hallway. And they still waited.

The prosecution would say Gonzales was the first on scene. He had information others didn't. He had training he didn't follow. He's not being charged because of what everyone else did. He's being charged because of what he did. Or didn't do.

That's a fair point. Criminal responsibility is individual. You can't escape punishment for your own actions by pointing at others who did worse. If Gonzales violated the law, the fact that 399 other officers also failed doesn't make him innocent.

But the defense would say he's the fall guy. The one they could make a case against. The one who talked to investigators and gave them ammunition. The one who isn't protected by qualified immunity or police union lawyers or institutional power. A school district cop, not a state trooper or federal agent, prosecuted by a local DA under a state law that's never been used this way before.

That's also a fair point. The criminal justice system is supposed to apply equally to everyone. But it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes the person who gets charged is the person without power, without connections, without the resources to fight back. Sometimes accountability falls on the easiest target, not the most culpable one.

For the families of the 21 victims, this trial is about accountability. They've waited over three years. They've watched investigation after investigation conclude that the response was a disaster. They've heard officials apologize and resign and promise reforms. But no one has been held criminally responsible. This is their chance to see the system actually hold someone accountable.

I watched some of them in that courtroom today. Parents who buried children. Grandparents who lost grandchildren. Siblings who grew up without brothers and sisters. They sat through the 911 calls. They saw the photographs of the truck and the rifle and the magazines full of ammunition. They listened to lawyers argue about legal standards and evidentiary rules while their children's names were read into the record.

They want someone to answer for what happened. That's a human need. When something terrible happens, we want to know why. We want someone held responsible. We want the system to tell us that this wasn't acceptable, that there are consequences, that we won't let it happen again.

Is this trial that answer? I don't know. Maybe convicting Adrian Gonzales provides some measure of closure. Maybe it sends a message that officers who fail to protect children will face consequences. Maybe it changes how police respond to the next school shooting.

Or maybe it doesn't change anything. Maybe it gives people someone to blame while the system that failed remains intact. Maybe the reforms that actually matter, the communication systems and training protocols and door locks that work, get lost in the spectacle of a trial.

For Adrian Gonzales, this trial is about his life. He's 52 years old. He faces 29 counts of child endangerment. If convicted on all counts with maximum consecutive sentences, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. He's maintained he's innocent. That he did the best he could. That the statute was never meant to apply to him.

I don't know if he's telling the truth. I don't know what was in his heart that day. I don't know if he was confused or scared or frozen or simply unable to process what was happening. I know that trauma affects people differently. I know that training doesn't always translate to performance under fire. I know that some people run toward danger and some people run away and you don't always know which one you'll be until you're tested.

What I do know is that he's entitled to a fair trial. To have his fate decided by evidence, not emotion. To have the state prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. That's what the system promises everyone. Even people accused of terrible things. Especially people accused of terrible things.

For everyone else, this trial is about what comes next. If Gonzales is convicted, does that change how officers respond to active shooters? Does it make them more aggressive, knowing they might face criminal charges for hesitation? Or does it make them more cautious, afraid of liability? Does it encourage school districts to hire more officers? Or does it make officers refuse school assignments?

We don't know. We're in uncharted territory. This has never been done before. The consequences, whatever they are, will unfold over years. In courtrooms and training academies and school hallways and the minds of officers who have to decide, in a split second, whether to run toward the gunfire or wait for backup.

What to Watch For

The trial resumes Thursday. Stephanie Hail will be back on the stand. The defense will finish their cross-examination. The prosecution will have a chance to redirect. And we'll find out what the judge decides about the prior inconsistent statement issue.

Melody Flores will testify. She's the teacher who spoke directly to Gonzales. Who told him where the shooter was. Who, according to the defense, was wrong about critical details. Her testimony is central to the prosecution's case. They say Gonzales had information and failed to act on it. The defense will try to show that Flores's information was inaccurate, that she was traumatized and confused, that Gonzales couldn't have acted on information that was wrong.

Body camera footage will be played. We'll see what Gonzales actually did. Where he went. How long he waited. What he said. This is the prosecution's strongest evidence. It's also a risk. If the footage shows an officer trying to respond, trying to figure out what's happening, trying to do his job under impossible circumstances, it might generate sympathy.

Gonzales's interview with investigators will likely come in. He told them he "locked in" on Melody Flores and didn't see the gunman. He said he tried to call for SWAT but couldn't transmit from inside the building. He said once he got outside to get radio reception, he never went back in. The prosecution will use his own words against him. The defense will try to contextualize them.

Expert witnesses will testify about active shooter protocols, police training, and what officers should do under fire. Both sides will have experts. They'll disagree. The jury will have to decide who to believe.

And at some point, we'll see those autopsy photographs. The judge hasn't excluded them all. When the jury sees what that rifle did to those children, the emotional temperature in that courtroom will change. The defense knows it. They warned the jury in opening. They'll object to every photo. Some of those objections might be sustained. But the jury is going to see at least some of what happened in those classrooms.

Your Turn

Can you convict a police officer for not being brave enough? The prosecution says Gonzales had training and didn't follow it. The defense says he drove toward danger while others hung back. Where do you draw the line between poor judgment and criminal conduct?

Does it matter that other officers did less? Gilbert Lemones testified that officers at the corner with rifles didn't follow Gonzales onto the campus. They're not on trial. Does that change how you view this case, or is each officer responsible only for their own actions?

What would you need to see to convict? The burden is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. After Day 1, do you see reasonable doubt? What evidence would change your mind either way?

Is this justice or scapegoating? Nearly 400 officers responded. Two are charged. Every investigation found systemic failure at every level. Is prosecuting Adrian Gonzales accountability, or is it finding someone to blame because the real failures are too big to punish?

Should the door lock failures matter? The defense brought up the school's pattern of defeating locks, the broken lock that was never fixed. Does shared responsibility reduce individual accountability, or is that just passing the buck?

TX v. Adrian Gonzales

What the Jury Saw

Why This Matters

The Bigger Picture

What to Watch For

Your Turn

📺 DAY 1 COMPLETE COVERAGE

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