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The jury has begun deliberations in the first criminal trial related to the 2022 school shooting massacre in Uvalde, Texas.
In closing arguments laid out Wednesday morning, both the prosecution and the defense passionately urged the jury to see the evidence their way.
Both sides also agreed that the jury’s verdict would send a message to law enforcement who respond to future school shootings — but they disagreed on what message the verdict would send.
“Make no mistake, the 12 of you will set the bar for law enforcement in these situations: if it's appropriate to stand outside hearing a hundred shots while children are being slaughtered. That is your decision to tell the state of Texas,” Special Prosecutor Bill Turner told the jury.
Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell said a guilty verdict would tell police officers that they will be held responsible if they don’t act.
“I want officers to know those days are over,” Mitchell said. “We're not going to continue to teach children to rehearse their own death and not hold them to the training that's mandated by law: that when you hear the gunfire, you go to it, you go to the shots, you stop the dying, and you hold civilians, children above yourself.”
Defense attorney Jason Goss, however, said that a guilty verdict would tell police officers that they could be prosecuted if they do act.
“What you tell police officers is, don't go in, don't react, don't respond, stay on the perimeter, because Randy Hill isn't sitting in that chair. He's not,” said Goss, referring to an officer that the prosecution said had been assigned to create a perimeter around the scene.
“Adrian Gonzales is here. Randy Hill is not. None of those officers are in that chair,” Goss added. “That's what you're going to tell them. You're going to tell them, ‘Don't do it.’”
Defense attorney Nico LaHood told the jury that a verdict of not guilty would instead send a message to prosecutors that they shouldn’t single out one officer for charges.
“Send a message to the government that it wasn’t right to concentrate on Adrian Gonzales,” LaHood said. “Send the message you can't do that. You can't pick and choose.”
Another major point of difference is the timeline. The prosecution said Adrian Gonzales waited three and a half minutes to enter the hallway of the school and attempt to engage the gunman. The defense said there was only one minute and 48 seconds from the time Gonzales arrived on scene to the time the gunman entered the adjoined fourth grade classrooms where he killed 19 children and two teachers and injured 10 more children.
During closing arguments, the defense also repeatedly claimed that the prosecution was twisting the facts, often referring to a twisted pretzel. The prosecution, meanwhile, repeatedly made objections, saying that the defense was attempting to mislead the jury.
Adrian Gonzales is a former Uvalde school district police officer. The prosecution charged him with 29 counts of child endangerment for the 19 children who were killed in the shooting and the 10 children who were injured but survived.
If the jury comes back with a conviction, it will be up to the judge to decide Gonzales’ punishment. Under the Texas penal code, a charge of child endangerment comes with a maximum punishment of two years in state jail.
Prosecution's Argument
The prosecution’s main argument is that Adrian Gonzales had time to approach the gunman and delay him from entering the classrooms.
“The defendant's statement, I think, clears up almost the entire case,” Turner said, referring the statement he gave to Texas Rangers shortly after the shooting.
Turner said that Gonzales’ testimony shows that he heard gunshots and that teacher’s aide Melodye Flores had told him what direction the gunman was in.
“That's when I heard the rounds start going off. I never saw him. I never went to the school until I got coverage over here. Then I made entry,” Turner quoted Gonzales as saying.
“And Adrian Gonzales decides to go to the back of his car, call (Officer) Mariano Pargas because he's got a bigger unit, and says, ‘I'm not going in until I get cover,’” Turner said.
“Did the defendant have time to act? We brought you videos, the funeral home videos, as well as the hallway videos as well as dispatch, to tell you what he was aware of, when he was aware of it,” Turner added. “And what was going on is he stood outside the fourth-grade wing for three and a half minutes before he made his first move, before he moved forward.”
Turner said the prosecution proved children were in danger while Gonzales waited for cover by showing that 60 shots were fired in the adjoining classrooms before Gonzales joined four other officers and entered the school.
“Those 60 shots in rooms 111 and 112 before Adrian Gonzales entered, those shots ended those kids' lives. This was over before he went in,” Turner said. “A lot of blame for a whole lot of officers. This was over while (Gonzales) stood outside.”
Turner also brought up points in the defenses’ case in order to refute them.
Contrary to the defenses’ argument that Gonzales didn’t have time to confront the gunman because he was at a different wing of the school and was too far away, Turner said it would only have taken about 15 seconds to reach the shooter at a jog.
“We brought you evidence as somebody who covered almost that same distance who was able to do it at a jog in about 11 seconds. If it was further than that give it 15-18 seconds, but it certainly wasn't 45 seconds,” Turner said.
Defense's Argument
The defense team’s main argument, meanwhile, is that Gonzales never saw the gunman and, because he never saw the gunman, it was reasonable for him to take cover and orient himself.
“Yes, you run to the gunfire if you know where it's coming from. If you don't know where it's coming from, you take cover and assess until you know where it is coming from,” Goss said.
“All the active shooter trainings involve them seeing the shooter and then going after the shooter, which makes sense. But they are prosecuting a person that they will have to admit — and they have admitted, and they've stipulated and never contested — that Adrian never saw the shooter,” Goss added. “They have just said, ‘Well, we don't care. Yeah, he said he didn't know where the shooter was. We don't believe him.’”
The defense also argued that the prosecution unfairly focused on Gonzales, when other officers also arrived before the shooter entered the school, including Juan Saucedo, who was an officer with the Uvalde Police Department at the time of the shooting.
The defense showed video footage of Saucedo pointing a rifle towards the school from behind a police vehicle. At the time of the video, Saucedo asked his commanding officer, Daniel Coronado, for permission to shoot.
“Everybody else gets a pass. Randy Hill gets a pass. Saucedo gets a pass. ‘Well, yeah, Saucedo said, ‘I think I see him. Permission to shoot?’ ‘Well, we don't believe he said that, or, if he did say that, he had kids behind him, so he shouldn't shoot. That's crazy. That's crazy,” Goss said.
The prosecution contends that Saucedo only had a shot for a moment, and that he hesitated because he would have been shooting towards the school and didn’t want to hit children.
The defense also argued that the prosecution chose to indict Gonzales because they were under pressure to find someone to blame, and that the prosecution is hoping that the horrific nature of the shooting will sway the jury.
“I say this respectfully, as respectfully as I can,” LaHood told the jury. “They're trying to hijack your emotion to circumvent your reason.”
Goss said he could only imagine the pain of parents who can never hug their children again.
“I can imagine the pain and I can imagine the anger. I can imagine wanting to put somebody in that chair, because I can't put the monster that did that to my child in that chair,” Goss said. “I can imagine putting the pressure, and I can imagine them responding to the pressure, and I can imagine them putting (Gonzales) in that chair, him and only him in that chair to try to pay for the pain.”
Mitchell, however, took issue with the insinuation that she caved to pressure.
“If you remember, in the opening statements, the defense talked about all these third-party investigations that went on in the opening, and the easiest thing would have been me to do what all those did, which is, say, ‘Don't blame us. Blame somebody else.’ Or: ‘Everybody's to blame, therefore, you can't hold anybody responsible,’” Mitchell said. “That would have been the easiest thing. So, I've never bowed to political pressure, and that's not what this case is about.”
Mitchell left the jury with one final thought before sending the jury off for deliberations.
“We cannot continue to let children die in vain. We cannot,” Mitchell said. “Nueces County is not any different from Uvalde County. We cannot let 19 children die in vain and another 10 to suffer. They're going to be that suffering for a long time. On behalf of those 19 children, I respectfully request that after your deliberations, that you return a verdict of guilty.”
A judge moved the trial from Uvalde County to Corpus Christi, the county seat of Nueces County, after the defense argued that they couldn’t find an impartial jury in Uvalde.
