By Brad Brooks
Jan 7 (Reuters) – A Texas judge on Wednesday denied a motion for a mistrial in the case of a police officer accused of endangering children with a failed response to the 2022 shooting at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 students and two teachers.
Judge Sid Harle ruled against the mistrial request made by defense lawyers for Adrian Gonzales. The lawyers sought a mistrial the day after testimony began with a witness offering details not previously shared with the defense. Defense lawyers said this violated laws that the prosecution share evidence with the defense.
Harle said inclusion of the testimony appeared to have been inadvertent, and that the trial would resume with the jury on Thursday morning.
Gonzales, 52, a former Uvalde school district police officer, was charged in 2024 with 29 child endangerment counts stemming from how he responded during one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. According to his indictment, he failed to confront the shooter at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
Gonzales pleaded not guilty. His defense attorneys, in their opening statement on Tuesday, argued that he did the best he could in a chaotic scene in which it was difficult to confront a gunman he could not see or otherwise locate.
The defense request for a mistrial came after Stephanie Hale, who was a third grade teacher at the school, testified on Tuesday that she saw the gunman on the south side of the school. Hale had never told investigators or a grand jury that she had seen the gunman, but said in court that she had shared that information with prosecutors. The defense said they never received those details from the prosecutors.
The defense said the information was critical to their trial strategy. They are arguing that Gonzales never saw the gunman and could not confront him, because Gonzales was on the south side of the school, while they argue the gunman remained on the west side of the school before he entered the building – out of Gonzales’ eyesight. Hale’s surprise testimony contradicted that.
Judge Harle said to remedy the situation, he would allow the defense to play for the jury the entirety of Hale’s interview with investigators just a few days after the shooting, in which she never mentioned seeing the gunman, who was later shot and killed by responding officers.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by Donna Bryson and David Gregorio)
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