Victims of the Uvalde school shooting on May 24, 2022, that left 21 people dead — 19 children and two teachers — have filed a lawsuit against local and state police, the city of Uvalde, and other school and law enforcement officials. According to court documents, the victims are seeking $27 billion due to the delayed response in confronting the shooter.
BREAKING: First interior photo of the Uvalde school has been released.
Officers are seen at 11:52am with rifles and ballistic shield. The shooter remained inside alive until 12:50pm pic.twitter.com/p2uM604i0o
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) June 20, 2022
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday and argues that officials failed to follow active shooter protocol during the incident — as law enforcement waited over an hour to confront the shooter who was inside a fourth-grade classroom and actively killing people while police stood outside.
The Uvalde hearing today confirms what I said day one: there is NO excuse for the inaction of the on-scene officers that day. None.
Thanks to @JesseKellyDC for having me on tonight to discuss. pic.twitter.com/d91j8ubXIC
— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) June 22, 2022
The lawsuit is seeking class-action status and damages for the survivors of the shooting at Robb Elementary School who have sustained “emotional or psychological damages as a result of the defendants’ conduct and omissions on that date.”
The individuals who filed the suit include school staff and representatives of minors who were present at the school when the shooter carried out the deadly massacre.
The lawsuit argues that, rather than following previous training to stop an active shooter, “the conduct of the three hundred and seventy-six (376) law enforcement officials who were on hand for the exhaustively torturous seventy-seven minutes of law enforcement indecision, dysfunction, and harm, fell exceedingly short of their duty bound standards.”
Here is the full Uvalde shooting video from the surveillance cameras. It includes 911 calls that are not easy to sit through. Gunshots are heard throughout. The officers are seen throughout standing back. https://t.co/ZDZkC3OHSf
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) July 13, 2022
According to reporting from Newsmax, “Uvalde officials said they had not been served the paperwork as of Friday and did not comment on pending litigation. The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Uvalde Consolidated School District did not respond to requests for comment.”
A group of Uvalde shooting survivors has also filed a lawsuit against Daniel Defense, the company that made the gun used by the shooter, seeking $6 billion in damages.
While speaking during a congressional hearing over the summer, the company’s CEO Marty Daniels characterized the Uvalde shooting and other similar incidents as “deeply disturbing,” but made sure to separate the firearms themselves from the acts of violence — noting that America’s mass shootings are problems that need to be addressed and solved at the local level.
Earlier this week, another federal lawsuit was filed against many of the same people and entities by one mother of a child killed in the shooting.
Several officers involved in the incident have since left the force — two were fired because of their actions at the scene, while others have resigned or were placed on leave.
Meanwhile, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Col. Steve McCraw, acknowledged that officers made mistakes during the Uvalde shooting when he was confronted for the first time by families of the victims in October regarding false and shifting accounts of the incident from law enforcement and lack of transparency in the information made available to the public. However, he continued to defend his agency, claiming that they “did not fail” Uvalde.
