Inside the Kill Zone: The Missing Body Camera Footage

I need you to understand something about what happened in that courtroom today.

Three officers were at the corner of Geraldine and Grove on May 24, 2022. They had a direct line of sight to the west entrance of Robb Elementary. One of them had an AR-15. One of them asked for permission to shoot the gunman. None of them followed the shooter into the building.

And now we know that neither of the two body cameras at that location recorded a single second of footage from that critical moment.

Today, outside the presence of the jury, Sergeant Coronado took the stand to explain. He's retired now. No longer with Uvalde PD. The attorneys wanted to know one thing: where is the body camera footage from Geraldine and Grove?

Read that again. Two officers. Two body cameras. Neither recorded anything from the location where they had eyes on the shooter. And both cameras activated at the exact same moment after the officers had already separated and moved to different locations.

The Implications Are Staggering

Let me walk you through what this means.

The prosecution's entire theory in this case is that Adrian Gonzales, as the first officer on scene, had a duty to engage, distract, or delay the shooter. But Gonzales was on the south side of the building. He had no line of sight to the west entrance where the shooter walked in.

Meanwhile, three other officers were at Geraldine and Grove with a clear view. One had a rifle capable of making that shot. One literally asked for permission to shoot. Permission he didn't need under Texas law. Any citizen has the right to use deadly force to protect a third person from imminent death.

The footage that would show us exactly what those three officers were doing as a gunman walked past them and into a school full of children does not exist.

Coronado says he didn't activate his camera until he was already running down the breezeway on the other side of campus. He says he was receiving what he believed was gunfire when he first arrived and the camera wasn't on his mind. That's understandable. That's human.

But here's the part that isn't understandable: Officer Mendoza's camera, which was in a completely different location by then, activated at the exact same second as Coronado's.

The attorneys are openly asking: is there footage that was deleted?

Why This Matters to the Case

The defense has been hammering this point throughout the trial. Adrian Gonzales is on trial for failing to stop a shooter he couldn't see. Three officers who could see the shooter, who had better weapons, who had the opportunity and ability to stop him before he ever entered that building, are not on trial.

And now the footage that would document what those officers did or didn't do has vanished.

This isn't speculation. This isn't conspiracy theory. This is what the attorneys said on the record today. Two cameras, same location, no footage, simultaneous activation after separation. The prosecution itself is trying to understand it.

They plan to talk to Officer Mendoza tonight. Coronado will be back on the stand tomorrow.

I've been doing this long enough to know that coincidences happen. Equipment fails. People forget to hit record. But when the only footage that could show us what officers with a clear shot at a mass murderer were doing during the most critical seconds of the Uvalde massacre just happens to not exist? And two cameras in different places just happen to turn on at the exact same moment?

That's the kind of coincidence that demands explanation.

▶️ WATCH THE FULL HEARING Where Is the Body Cam Footage From Officers Who Could Have Stopped the Shooter

This trial was supposed to be about accountability. About whether one officer failed in his duty to protect children. But every day we're learning more about how many people failed. How many opportunities were missed. How many layers of the system broke down.

And now we're learning that some of the evidence that might have shown us the full picture either was never recorded or no longer exists.

The question isn't just whether Adrian Gonzales is guilty. The question is whether we'll ever know the full truth about what happened at Robb Elementary.

Based on what we heard today, I'm not sure we will.