UVALDE, Texas — Relatives and friends of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting shouted “Coward! Coward!” on Monday as one of the only two officers charged in the 2022 massacre sat in a white pickup outside a jail courthouse.
The anger and emotion erupted at former Uvalde school district police officer Adrian Gonzales after a procedural hearing attended by family members and friends of the 19 children and two teachers who were killed. Gonzales and former school district police chief Pete Arredondo had been in the courtroom a few minutes earlier for the hearing.
The encounter outside the jail courthouse is the first time since the shooting on May 24, 2022, that families of the victims have been in close proximity to Arredondo.
The shooting is one of the worst mass school shootings on record.
Despite the presence of hundreds of local, state and federal officers, the shooting has been blasted as a “colossal failure” after officers waited more than 70 minutes to breach the classroom and kill the gunman, who carried an AR-15 style rifle.
Arredondo has been accused of failing to assume command. A Justice Department report said it was possible some children might have been saved had officers gone into the classroom earlier.
Gonzales’ attorney had stopped to talk to the media. Family members gathered as he was finishing his comments and began shouting, sending him quickly into the truck, which quickly left the parking lot.
Brett Cross, the father of Uziyah Garcia, one of the children who was killed, was among those at the hearing and in the crowd shouting “Coward.”
“Just to see him [Arredondo] sitting there so smugly, like he didn’t do anything wrong,” was upsetting, Cross said.
Gonzales’ attorney told reporters that investigative reports on the shooting by the Justice Department and the Texas House did not suggest prosecuting his client.
As law enforcement officers waited, children were dialing 911 and calling their parents asking for help.
Recently released video and 911 calls include a call from a child survivor begging for rescue, saying, “I don’t want to die.”
Many families were also outside the school begging to be allowed in to get their children, but officers kept them back.
Arredondo and Gonzales have been charged in connection with the massacre. Arredondo faces 10 counts of abandoning or endangering a child. The indictment says he “intentionally, knowingly, recklessly and with criminal negligence” placed 10 children in “imminent danger of bodily injury, death, physical impairment and mental impairment.”
Both have pleaded not guilty. Arredondo has maintained that officers did not hesitate, that he was not the officer in charge and that he has been made a scapegoat.
Gonzales is charged with 29 felony counts of abandoning or endangering a child; the indictment says he placed 29 children “in imminent danger” of injury or death.
‘Frustrating’
“It’s frustrating that these men just get to walk around free, smiling and joking and having fun, when our children are no longer here,” said Cross, who wears a bracelet with his son’s ashes and has his name tattooed on his right shoulder. Uziyah was 10 when he was killed.
Arredondo had already left the grounds — which is on Uvalde’s outskirts — well before families could confront him, family members said in the parking lot.
At the hearing, Arredondo sat stoically in profile facing a side wall, making no eye contact with the family members in the approximately 45 minutes they were in the small and tightly controlled courtroom. Gonzales sat apart from Arredondo, facing the judge.
Family members were in reserved benches to the left of Arredondo and Gonzales. They sat a few feet from the officers, behind the court rail.
Jacklyn Cazares, 9, was among the victims. Jesse Rizo, her uncle, was waiting outside before the hearing when Arredondo arrived. He said they locked eyes and Arredondo turned away.
He told NBC News that anger and tension welled up inside him when he saw Arredondo. In the courtroom, he showed a reporter that his hand was shaking.
There had been some doubt among families that Arredondo would be in the courtroom, Rizo said. He said before the hearing that Arredondo needed to show in court.
“He didn’t show up the day of the shooting — you know his mind was absent that day,” Rizo said, referring to Arredondo’s failure to stop the shooter for over an hour or breach the classrooms.
The indictment accuses Arredondo of evacuating officers from the wing of the school before they confronted the shooter, even though he had been told an injured child or children were inside. It says he failed to determine whether the classroom door was locked or to provide keys or tools to get inside classrooms 111 and 112, the adjoining classrooms where the gunman killed the children and the teachers.
Arredondo was in court because his attorney was trying to have the indictment dismissed, arguing he did not have a legal duty to perform his job well.
At the hearing, attorneys for the state and for the officers discussed the sharing and non-sharing of documents and evidence. Arredondo’s attorney asked for time to read the voluminous evidence. He said that the case report from the district attorney is at least 3,500 pages and that evidence will be much more; he said combing through it will be a “monumental task.”
The prosecutors told the judge that Border Patrol agents in the case have been cooperating.
Another hearing was set for Dec. 19.
Family members were also upset at the continued slow pace of the case. After the hearing recessed, Khloie Torres’ father, Ruben Torres, lashed out at 38th Judicial District Attorney Christina Mitchell, saying she was not doing her job and calling her “lazy” and “unprofessional” because some documents and reports were not yet complete.
Mitchell had him removed from the courtroom.
“They are bullies,” he said outside the courthouse.
Asked about seeing Arredondo, he said, “I could care less about that piece of s—.”
The shooter was finally stopped by a Border Patrol tactical team that led a group of officers into the classrooms who killed him.
But a Customs and Border Protection report released last week criticized the 188 Border Patrol agents who were on the scene for failing to establish command and for inadvertently placing gunshot wound victims on a school bus without their first getting immediate medical treatment.
