By Brad Brooks
Jan 6 (Reuters) – The first day of the trial of a police officer who responded to the 2022 shooting at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 students and two teachers was interrupted on Tuesday after a witness provided testimony not previously presented to the defense.
Texas state Judge Sid Harle dismissed the jury until Thursday and ordered the prosecution and defense to return on Wednesday to work through the issues raised by the testimony from a former teacher at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
The defense’s objections to the testimony could lead to it being stricken, or to the extreme and rarely granted remedy of a mistrial.
Former Uvalde school district police officer Adrian Gonzales, 52, is on trial in Nueces County Court in Corpus Christi for his role as one of 376 officers from local, state and federal agencies who responded to the shooting.
Police were criticized for waiting 77 minutes before entering the classroom where the gunman was holed up, despite teachers and students making calls to 911 emergency services, saying they were in the room with the gunman and surrounded by bodies.
The trial was moved to Corpus Christi after the defense successfully argued Gonzales could not get a fair trial in Uvalde. Gonzales has pleaded not guilty to the 29 counts of child endangerment he faces for allegedly failing to confront the gunman, who was later killed by other officers.
Stephanie Hale, who was a third grade teacher at the school on the day, testified that she saw the gunman on the south side of the school and also that she saw dust kicked up on that side of the school, potentially indicating that shots were fired.
Defense lawyer Jason Goss, during cross examination, said he was surprised by Hale’s testimony and that she did not tell police or a grand jury about seeing the gunman or seeing dust kicked up when she spoke with investigators after the shooting.
Hale was then allowed to listen to the interview she gave investigators shortly after the shooting, without the jury present.
Goss asked Hale if she would now agree that she never told investigators that she had seen the gunman or dirt flying up, to which Hale replied: “Correct.”
Hale was then asked by Goss if, during preparation for the trial, she had told prosecutors details about seeing the gunman and the dirt, to which she replied: “I believe so, yes.”
Goss said that if Hale had reported such matters to the prosecution, his side was entitled to have been informed before trial under U.S. law.
“This is a trial by ambush,” Goss said in court, evoking the legal requirement that the prosecution not be surprised by the defense with evidence.
Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell, who is overseeing the prosecution, told the judge that Hale had never told her team the specific location where she had seen the gunman or that she saw dirt flying up.
Outside court, the main defense lawyer, Nico LaHood, told reporters that a mistrial “is a remedy allowed by law, but we’re not saying we’re going to take that remedy or not, or argue for that remedy.”
‘DID WHAT HE COULD’
Gonzales, who had spent a decade as a Uvalde city police officer before joining the school district’s force about a year before the shooting, was charged in 2024 with the child endangerment counts, according to his indictment, which said that he “failed to engage, distract, and delay the shooter” and that he also failed “to follow his active shooter training to respond to gun fire by advancing toward the gun fire.”
Each count carries the possibility of two years in prison to run concurrently.
“Adrian Gonzales does nothing more than mike his microphone and tell other officers what’s going on,” special prosecutor Bill Turner told the jury during his opening statement, repeatedly choking back tears as he spoke in the courtroom in Corpus Christi, Texas, where the trial was moved after the defense argued Gonzales could not get a fair trial in Uvalde.
The children inside the building were hiding and waiting for officers to come to their aid, the prosecutor added, but Gonzales and other police waited outside “as the slaughter begins.”
Two defense attorneys, in their opening statement, emphasized the chaotic scene and said that at no point did Gonzales see the gunman or fully understand where the gunman was, making it difficult to confront him.
“He did what he could with what he knew at the time,” LaHood said of his client.
Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the former chief of the Uvalde schools police and the person who investigators say was the officer in charge of the scene, faces 10 counts of child endangerment. His trial has not yet been scheduled.
State and federal investigations into the shooting found that officers left the 18-year-old gunman alone inside the classroom with children while weighing how to confront him.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by Donna Bryson, Nia Williams, Alistair Bell and Michael Perry)
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