{"id":422646,"date":"2026-01-22T09:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T09:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/422646\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T09:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T09:58:09","slug":"jury-acquits-former-uvalde-school-officer-in-first-criminal-trial-tied-to-robb-elementary-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/422646\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury acquits former Uvalde school officer in first criminal trial tied to Robb Elementary shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for TPR Today<\/a>, Texas Public Radio’s newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.<\/p>\n

CORPUS CHRISTI \u2014 A Nueces County jury on Wednesday acquitted former Uvalde CISD police officer Adrian Gonzales of all charges in the first criminal trial tied to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers.<\/p>\n

As the verdict was read, several family members of the victims sat in silence, visibly emotional, some covering their faces as they wiped away tears.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been an emotional roller coaster since day one. We prepared for the worst,\u201d said Javier Cazares, who lost his 9-year-old daughter, Jackie, in the shooting. \u201cWe had a little hope, but it wasn\u2019t enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Gloria<\/p>\n

Sam Owens\/AP<\/p>\n

\/<\/p>\n

Pool The San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n

Gloria Cazares, mother of Robb Elementary school shooting victim Jackie Cazaeres, reacts after the jury found former Uvalde school district police officer Adrian Gonzales not guilty at the Nueces County Courthouse on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, in Corpus Christi, Texas.<\/p>\n

Jesse Rizo, the uncle of Jackie Cazares, said he respected the jury\u2019s decision but believes it sends a troubling message to law enforcement in future situations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re an officer, you can stand by, stand down, and do nothing while people are executed, killed, slaughtered, massacred,\u201d Rizo said. \u201cIs that the message you sent today?\u201d<\/p>\n

The verdict ends the first attempt to hold a law enforcement officer criminally responsible for the delayed police response to the massacre, in which nearly 400 officers waited more than an hour to confront the gunman.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors had argued Gonzales, one of the first officers on scene, failed to act quickly enough to stop or delay the shooter. Defense attorneys said Gonzales never saw the gunman and acted reasonably given the limited information available to him at the time.<\/p>\n

During closing arguments earlier Wednesday, attorneys on both sides told jurors their verdict would send a message to law enforcement officers across Texas \u2014 though they disagreed sharply on what that message should be.<\/p>\n

Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell urged jurors to hold Gonzales accountable, arguing that officers are trained to move toward gunfire without waiting for backup.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot continue to let children die in vain,\u201d Mitchell said, asking jurors to return a guilty verdict.<\/p>\n

Defense attorney Nico LaHood urged jurors to reject what he described as an effort to single out one officer for systemic failures.<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

Sam Owens\/AP<\/p>\n

\/<\/p>\n

Pool The San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n

Former Uvalde school district police officer Adrian Gonzales, left, reacts as he stands beside his attorney, Nico LaHood, to answer reporters’ questions after the jury found Gonzales not guilty at the Nueces County Courthouse on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, in Corpus Christi, Texas. <\/p>\n

\u201cSend a message to the government that it wasn\u2019t right to concentrate on Adrian Gonzales,\u201d LaHood told the jury. \u201cYou can\u2019t pick and choose.\u201d<\/p>\n

A key point of disagreement centered on timing. Prosecutors said Gonzales waited roughly three and a half minutes before entering the school hallway. The defense said there were fewer than two minutes between Gonzales\u2019 arrival and the shooter entering the fourth-grade classrooms where the victims were killed.<\/p>\n

Gonzales was charged with 29 counts of child endangerment \u2014 one count for each of the 19 children who were killed and the 10 who were injured but survived. The jury found him not guilty on all counts after more than seven hours of deliberation. <\/p>\n

During a press conference held by the defense inside the courthouse after the verdict, Gonzales was asked by reporters what moving on looks like.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust picking up the pieces and moving forward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Gonzales said he was thankful for his attorneys and the jury.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you to the jury for considering all the evidence and reaching that verdict,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The trial had been moved from Uvalde County to Corpus Christi after defense attorneys argued Gonzales could not receive a fair trial in Uvalde.<\/p>\n

\"Mothers<\/p>\n

Sam Owens\/AP<\/p>\n

\/<\/p>\n

Pool The San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n

Mothers of Robb Elementary School shooting victims, from left, Sandra Torres, Veronica Luevanos, and Felicha Martinez cry together outside the Nueces County Courthouse on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026, in Corpus Christi, Texas, after former Uvalde school district police officer Adrian Gonzales was found not guilty. (Sam Owens\/The San Antonio Express-News via AP, Pool)<\/p>\n

Former Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who investigators have described as the incident commander during the response, is awaiting a separate trial on charges connected to the shooting.<\/p>\n

The verdict leaves unresolved questions for families of the victims seeking accountability for the police response.<\/p>\n

Standing next to his client, LaHood acknowledged the pain still felt by victims\u2019 families.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a long day coming for Adrian and his family, but we\u2019re humbled by the verdict,\u201d LaHood told reporters. \u201cWe also know there are families on the other side who have been living with this new normal for three years. They\u2019re still in pain, and this was a disappointment for them. We acknowledge that.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Shapiro, director of the MPA Inspection and Oversight Program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former prosecutor and FBI agent, said one argument from the defense captured why jurors acquitted Gonzales.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat struck me here was one of the defense attorneys\u2019 comments was this man is being scapegoated,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cI hate to oversimplify, but that seems to be the best one-sentence summary of why the defendant was acquitted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A Texas Department of Public Safety officer stands in front of crosses with the names of victims of a school shooting, at a memorial outside Robb Elementary school, two days after a gunman killed nineteen children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas, on May 26, 2022.<\/p>\n

Shapiro said he would not be surprised if the separate case against Arredondo also ends in an acquittal.<\/p>\n

He pointed to extensive state and federal investigations, including a roughly 600-page Justice Department report and a report by the Texas Legislature, that found systemic failures in the law enforcement response.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think if you\u2019re going to make a criminal case out of it, then you have to make it a criminal case about all of those persons that played a material role in allowing this event to go on for 77 minutes,\u201d Shapiro said.<\/p>\n

Victims\u2019 family members said they will return to the courtroom when the next chapter of their pursuit of accountability begins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio’s newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-422646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}