She Did Everything Right

Elsa Avila's door was already locked when the shooting started.

Let that sink in. This wasn't a teacher who forgot to secure her classroom. This wasn't a failure of training. This wasn't someone who froze or panicked or made the wrong call. Elsa Avila, a fourth grade teacher with 26 years in the Uvalde district, kept her door locked as a matter of policy. Every day. All year. It was automatic.

When her line leader looked out the door window and saw kids from another class running and screaming, Avila didn't wait for the Raptor alert system. She didn't wait for the principal. She didn't wait for the intercom. She poked her head out, heard a woman screaming "Get in your rooms!" in a voice she described as "terrified," slammed her door, killed the lights, and started moving her students to the secure corner.

She did everything right.

The bullet came through the wall anyway.

The Contradiction at the Heart of This Case

Here's what the prosecution needs you to believe: Adrian Gonzales, by failing to engage the shooter, endangered children. His inaction created the danger. If he had done what he was trained to do, lives might have been saved.

Here's what Elsa Avila's testimony actually showed: A teacher in a classroom across the hall from the kill zone did everything the system asked of her. Perfect compliance. Immediate action. No hesitation. Her students followed their training too. They got quiet. They got low. They huddled in the corner furthest from the door and windows.

She was shot while standing up to wave students away from the windows. Standing. Not hiding. Actively protecting her kids by directing them to safety. The bullet hit her in the left side. She fell to the floor. She spent the next 77 minutes bleeding while her fourth graders tried to comfort her.

Think about that. Children. Ten years old. Watching their teacher bleed on the floor. Trying to keep her calm because that's what they were trained to do. Stay quiet. Take care of each other. Wait for the adults to come.

The adults didn't come for 77 minutes.

What the Defense Heard

Nico LaHood is not stupid. He knows emotional testimony cuts both ways. Yes, Avila's story is devastating. Yes, the jury felt the weight of what those children experienced. But LaHood also heard something else in that testimony, and he extracted it with surgical precision on cross-examination.

The Raptor alert system? Never went off. Avila was holding her phone. No notification.

The external doors to the building? Supposed to be locked by policy. Supposed to be.

Individual teachers initiating their own lockdowns? Avila did it herself. No alert required. No administrator telling her what to do. She heard danger and she acted.

She also heard something during those 77 minutes. A voice. Someone talking to the shooter. "Sir, we need you to stop. We don't want anyone else to get hurt."

That's negotiation. That's officers treating this as a barricade situation, not an active shooter. The defense will use that. They'll argue the response was a systemic failure, a collective breakdown in command and protocol, not one officer's criminal negligence.

The Uncomfortable Question

If Elsa Avila did everything right and still got shot, what exactly was Adrian Gonzales supposed to do that would have prevented it?

I'm not saying Gonzales is innocent. I'm not saying he's guilty. I'm saying the prosecution has a problem, and Avila's testimony made it worse, not better.

The state's theory requires you to believe that Gonzales's specific inaction caused specific harm to specific children. But here's a teacher who took every correct action the system prescribed, and the system still failed her. Her locked door didn't stop the bullet. Her immediate lockdown didn't stop the bullet. Her training, her instincts, her 26 years of experience didn't stop the bullet.

The bullet came through the wall.

So when the prosecution says Gonzales should have engaged the shooter, should have followed his training, should have acted differently, the defense has a ready answer: Even perfect compliance with the system didn't protect the people inside that building. The system itself was broken. The doors that should have been locked weren't. The alerts that should have gone out didn't. The response that should have been immediate wasn't.

Is that one man's crime? Or is that institutional failure being redirected onto a scapegoat?

What She Wanted the Jury to Hear

Avila's worst fear, she testified, was dying in front of her students. "I kept praying, God please don't let me die in front of my students."

She didn't die. She survived. She retired because of PTSD. She couldn't step inside a school building without panic attacks. Then she went to therapy, did the work, and this year she went back to teaching at Sacred Heart Catholic School.

When the prosecutor told her that any child blessed to be under her tutelage is blessed, he wasn't wrong. This is a woman who, while bleeding on the floor with a bullet wound in her side, was thinking about how to protect her kids if the shooter came through the connecting door. She was planning to push desks to trip him up. She was ready to fight.

That's the kind of person who was in that building on May 24, 2022. Teachers who loved their students. Teachers who would die for them. Teachers who did die for them.

And the system failed every single one of them.

▶️ WATCH NOW Wounded Uvalde Teacher Tells Jury the Terror of Doing Everything Right and Still Getting Shot

The Trial Continues

Adrian Gonzales is entitled to a fair trial. The families of 21 victims are entitled to see the system work. Both things can be true. But as I watch this testimony, I keep coming back to the same question:

Is this prosecution about accountability, or is it about giving a grieving community someone to blame?

Elsa Avila did everything right. The training worked. Her students followed protocol. They survived. But she was still shot through the wall, and she still spent 77 minutes wondering if she would die in front of the children she was trying to protect.

If that's what "doing everything right" looks like, then maybe the question isn't what Adrian Gonzales should have done differently. Maybe the question is why 400 officers and an entire system designed to protect children allowed this to happen at all.

That's not a question this trial is designed to answer. But it's the question that hangs over every piece of testimony.