The trial of a former Uvalde school police officer accused of failing to act during the 2022 Robb Elementary School massacre is set to resume Thursday with cross-examination of a teacher whose account of spotting the gunman prompted a failed mistrial motion from the defense.
Adrian Gonzales faces 29 felony counts of abandoning or endangering a child, as previously reported on by The Dallas Express, for allegedly placing more than two dozen children in “imminent danger” by ignoring active shooter training as the teenage gunman remained barricaded in adjoining classrooms for over 70 minutes. He has pleaded not guilty.
Judge Sid Harle denied the defense’s mistrial request Wednesday, ruling that discrepancies in teacher Stephanie Hale’s testimony did not warrant halting the proceedings.
The case was moved from Uvalde to Corpus Christi due to concerns about pretrial publicity and seating an impartial jury. The 12 jurors were drawn from a pool of 450 candidates.
Hale, a former third-grade teacher called by prosecutors, testified Tuesday that she saw someone matching the shooter’s description — a man dressed in black with a rifle — on the south side of the school, placing him closer to Gonzales. Defense attorney Nico LaHood has argued Gonzales was not close enough to stop, delay, or distract the mass shooter.
However, in an interview days after the May 24, 2022, shooting, Hale told investigators she had not seen the shooter and did not believe she was being shot at — a change defense attorneys said was not disclosed, affecting their jury selection strategy. The objection stopped the testimony on Tuesday evening.
“It was negligent, and I don’t believe what was testified to in front of the jury resonated enough to significantly affect your trial strategy. But what I am going to do is exclude her testimony,” Harle said.
Defense attorney Jason Goss objected, calling the account so emotional that jurors would struggle to ignore it.
“We will go with whatever remedy the court decides that we can decide it. However, we do not believe that it’s a sufficient remedy, and mistrial would be the opinion,” he said.
Harle said the statements did not fundamentally change the evidence and could be handled through cross-examination and jury instructions. While defense attorneys argued Hale provided the only evidence of the shooter on the south side, prosecutors noted bullet casings would support their case.
Under an agreement, the trial resumes at 9 a.m. Thursday with Hale on the stand. The defense will play portions of her original interview, prosecutors can redirect, and the defense reserves the right to seek exclusion of her testimony. They declined Harle’s offer to strike it entirely.
Gonzales is one of only two law enforcement officials charged in the response, which investigations criticized for a 77-minute delay that may have contributed to the deaths. Nearly 400 officers from various agencies waited outside as the gunman killed 19 children and two teachers. A tactical team eventually entered and killed the shooter.
Outside the court, Jesse Rizo, whose 9-year-old niece Jackie Cazares died in the attack, said a mistrial would have been an “injustice,” and his faith in District Attorney Christina Mitchell was briefly shaken but restored.
“I have confidence that she learned, I have confidence that she went back home last night … and she basically took the lessons, and she came back in today, she seemed a little more prepared, to me, to be honest, a little more assertive, a little more confident,” he said, ABC News reported.
LaHood expressed satisfaction with the ruling.
“We really trust this process, so we believe this remedy the judge did was appropriate,” he said, per ABC. “We preserved the error, and then we’ll proceed tomorrow.”
