Uvalde families reach $2M settlement with city two years after massacre – and sue nearly 100 cops who ‘cowered in fear while kids bled to death’

On the eve of the second anniversary of the Uvalde Elementary School massacre, the families of 19 victims reached a $2 million settlement with the city and announced they will sue nearly 100 “cowardly” state troopers.

Javier Cazarez, whose daughter Jackie was one of 19 children and two teachers slaughtered in classrooms 111 and 112, said: “No amount of money is worth the lives of our children.

‘It’s been an unbearable two years. We all know who took our children’s lives, but on May 24 there was a clear systemic failure. The whole world saw that.’

Speaking in Uvalde on Wednesday, attorney for the families Josh Koskoff explained that the settlement with the city of Uvalde was a good-faith effort, but it triggered a lawsuit against the city government.

About 26 Uvalde County officers responded the day of the shooting at Robb Elementary School.

They were among nearly 400 officers from local, state and federal agencies who rushed to the scene.

Three minutes after the shooting began, 11 officers were in the school, a Justice Department investigation found.

But inexplicably, officers waited 77 minutes after the shooting began to take down the lone gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos.

“The most significant failure was that the responding officers should have immediately recognized the incident as an active shooter situation, using resources and equipment sufficient to proceed immediately,” the federal report said.

School district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who has been identified as the incident commander, said he was waiting to enter the classroom, and told officers who wanted to rush the shooter to stop because he believed the shooter was barricaded with children still inside lived. .

However, Arredondo’s decision contradicts law enforcement training, which states that police must take action and endanger their own lives if shots have already been fired.

Families of the victims in Uvalde announced they have charged all 92 Texas DPS officers who were part of the botched response to the shooting at their children’s school. The above graph was part of the DOJ report on the school shooting and showed how many officers responded to the massacre

More than 90 Texas Department of Public Safety officers responded to the shooting in Uvalde, going against their training, which directs them to stop the shooter before anything else.

Uvalde School Police Chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo told investigators he was more concerned about rescuing students in other classrooms than trying to stop a gunman who had already shot children and teachers.

Surveillance footage from the school hallway shows police officers running from the classroom and trying to engage the gunman, who had an AR-15 rifle, and he shot at them.

But the officers’ story is in direct conflict with the survivors, some of whom called 911 while trapped in the classroom.

Those children told 911 operators that people had been shot but were still alive, and advocated for ambulances to be sent to them.

Both state and federal investigations have found that some victims might have been saved if they had received medical attention sooner.

‘We have been let down so many times. The time has come to do the right thing,” Cazarez added at the news conference Wednesday, surrounded by other grieving families of victims.

A separate $2 million settlement with Uvalde County is still being worked out, Koskoff told reporters.

The Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed it was investigating an incident after a video posted to Twitter showed a DPS trooper pushing a Uvalde mother whose child was a victim of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary.

Harrowing police footage shows distraught Uvalde students with blood-soaked hair and clothes fleeing Robb Elementary on the school bus as a girl tearfully tells officer how she tried not to cry while calling 911 to report mass shootings

“Yes, we are suing the state of Texas,” the lawyer added.

Koskoff also announced that a separate lawsuit would be filed in the future against the federal government, which had the most police officers.