UVALDE, Texas – Survivors of the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting and the victims’ families are preparing to head to Corpus Christi for weeks of testimony in the trial of a former police officer.
Adrian Gonzales, who was employed by the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District at the time of the shooting, faces 29 counts of child endangerment in connection with the shooting.
Jesse Rizo has waited nearly four years for justice for his 9-year-old niece, Jackie Cazares.
“He took that oath to serve and protect, to sacrifice, to do everything that he was supposed to do,” Rizo said. “And he failed them.”
On May 24, 2022, a gunman entered the school and killed 19 children and two teachers. Several others were injured.
It took law enforcement 77 minutes to confront the shooter.
“I want people to think about that as they look at people like Adrian Gonzales,” Rizo said, “and to see that Adrian allowed this monster to do whatever he wanted to do with these poor little kids and these teachers.”
Rizo said he plans to be in the courtroom to support his family for at least the first week.
“It’s gonna be tough, but we’re ready for it, though,” Rizo said.
A Uvalde County grand jury indicted Gonzales in 2024 on 29 counts of child endangerment: one count for each of the 19 children killed and 10 for the children who survived.
“He will be the face of a failure of a coward,” Rizo said of Gonzales. “It will always be that.”
Out of the hundreds who responded to the massacre, Gonzales and his boss — former Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo — are the only two law enforcement officers charged in connection with the shooting.
“It’s entirely disappointing,” Rizo said. “It’s something that I can’t understand how that’s even possible, you know?”
Gonzales’ attorneys requested that the trial be moved out of Uvalde County last year, arguing they would be unable to have a fair trial in the city where the shooting took place.
While traveling hundreds of miles away is inconvenient, Rizo said it’s nothing compared to what the children went through at Robb Elementary.
Rizo said he is nervous that the jury may not convict Gonzales.
He hopes the presence of his family and the others is a reminder of the children whose lives were ended and changed by the shooting.
“(I hope) when he hears a pin drop, that it hears the sound of a bullet,” Rizo said. “When he smells gunfire that he thinks of that child. That’s what I hope he gets because that’s the stuff that we have to live with. That is our life.”
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