Families of Uvalde school shooting victims suing Texas state police over botched response, agree to $2M settlement with city
Families of the victims of the Uvalde, Texas, mass school shooting announced Wednesday that they reached a settlement with the city and county over the botched police response to the massacre.
Ahead of the two year anniversary of the May 24, 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School when an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers, the victims’ families announced the settlement and a separate lawsuit against the state.
The families agreed to a $2 million settlement with the city, which includes a pledge for the Uvalde Police Department to see improved standards.
“For two long years, we have languished in pain and without any accountability from the law enforcement agencies and officers who allowed our families to be destroyed that day,” Veronica Luevanos, whose daughter, Jailah, and nephew, Jayce, were killed, said in a statement Wednesday. “This settlement reflects a first good faith effort, particularly by the City of Uvalde, to begin rebuilding trust in the systems that failed to protect us.”
In the aftermath of the massacre, law enforcement officials faced scrutiny for waiting some 77 minutes before breaching a classroom and killing the gunman.
During that period of time, students who were inside the classroom called 911, while their parents begged cops to go inside.
“For 77 minutes, 26 members of the Uvalde Police Department failed to confront an 18 year-old kid armed with an AR-15, and no disciplinary action has ever been taken — no firings, no demotions, notransparency — and the families remain eager for that to change,” Josh Koskoff, an attorney for the families, said in a statement. “But the healing process must begin, and the commitments made today by the City, in particular, are a step in that critical process.”
The Justice Department conducted a probe into law enforcement’s response to the shooting, finding that cops “demonstrated no urgency” in setting up a command post and failed to treat the killings as an active shooter situation.
“Nearly 100 officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety have yet to face a shred of accountability for cowering in fear while my daughter and nephew bled to death in their classroom,” Luevanos said.
The lawsuit against the state targets 92 officials within the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Uvalde School District, along with former Robb Elementary Principal Mandy Gutierrez and former Uvalde schools police Chief Peter Arredondo.
