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New testimony Wednesday added to the growing picture of what jurors are being asked to weigh in the trial of former Uvalde CISD police officer Adrian Gonzales: whether he failed to act when it mattered most during the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 children and two teachers.
Gonzales faces 29 counts of abandoning or endangering a child, one for each student who was inside the two fourth-grade classrooms where the gunman carried out the attack. Prosecutors say Gonzales was among the first officers to arrive, yet as nearly 400 law enforcement officers waited more than an hour before confronting the shooter, he had a chance to intervene but did not.
Melodye Flores, who worked as a teacher's aide at Robb Elementary, testified she saw the gunman approaching the school carrying a rifle and immediately tried to get Gonzales to intervene.
Flores told jurors she saw him pacing outside the school while the gunman was approaching the building.
"I kept telling him, 'He's right there. … You need to do something,'" Flores said, describing the moments before the gunman entered the building. "I was begging him to stop him."
Flores testified that Gonzales did not respond, and seconds later, the shooting began. She described running for her life as gunfire erupted around her.
"I thought I was going to die," she testified. "The shots were so close. I could feel them passing by me."
Prosecutors say her account shows the danger was obvious and immediate, and that Gonzales failed to act in a moment when every second mattered.
Other witnesses have also described the chaos inside the school, including teachers who saw the shooter in the hallway and tried to shield children as bullets tore through classroom doors.
The emotional testimony spilled into the courtroom on Tuesday when Velma Lisa Duran, the sister of slain teacher Irma Garcia, interrupted proceedings during discussion of locked classroom doors and the delayed police response. Judge Sid Harle ordered her removed from the courtroom and instructed jurors to disregard the interruption.
Last week, Judge Harle also ordered jurors to disregard a teacher's testimony that would have placed the shooter closer to Gonzales than previously established, due to inconsistencies in her account.
Defense attorneys maintain that Gonzales did not know the shooter's precise location and was not equipped with the tactical gear that would have allowed him to safely confront the gunman. They say Gonzales was focused on helping evacuate people from danger while waiting for better-equipped officers to arrive.
Jurors on Wednesday also heard from Dr. Cherie Hauptmeier, one of the physicians who treated victims at Uvalde Memorial Hospital, who testified that doctors were urgently called in and that eight to 10 physicians cared for 15 people with gunshot wounds, with some later transferred to San Antonio. As she described the severity of the injuries, Gonzales appeared visibly affected, lowering his head and wiping his eyes.
Wednesday was the seventh day of the trial being held in the Nueces County Courthouse in Corpus Christi after a judge ruled that the intense publicity surrounding the shooting in Uvalde made it impossible to seat an impartial jury there.
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