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After two days dominated by legal arguments and procedural disputes, the child-endangerment trial of a former Uvalde school district police officer shifted Thursday to emotional accounts that laid bare the human toll of the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers.
Before jurors heard that testimony, Presiding Judge Sid Harle excluded the account of a key prosecution witness, ruling that jurors must disregard testimony from former Robb Elementary teacher Stephanie Hale.
Hale had told the court she saw the gunman on the south side of Robb Elementary School, placing him closer to the defendant, former Uvalde CISD officer Adrian Gonzales, than had been previously disclosed to investigators. Defense attorneys objected, arguing the new details had not been shared earlier.
Speaking outside the presence of the jury, Harle emphasized that the ruling was procedural and not a judgment of Hale's credibility. "You did absolutely nothing wrong," the judge told her. "This is not on you. Memories change with traumatic events."
With Hale's testimony excluded, jurors then heard emotional accounts from two educators whose testimony focused on their personal experiences on May 24, 2022. They did not speak directly to Gonzales' actions or decision-making as the first officer on the scene.
Emilia "Amy" Marin, a former after-school coordinator, testified that she hid for at least 40 minutes as gunfire echoed through the building. She told jurors she was outside preparing for an end-of-year dance when she saw a pickup truck crash nearby and called 911. Marin described watching the gunman throw weapons over a fence before walking toward the school as children ran for safety.
"I kept asking the operator, where are the cops? Where are the cops? And I tell her, there's kids running everywhere," Marin testified.
While she was outside the school, Marin said she propped the door open with a rock because the door locked automatically. She testified that she kicked the rock out and closed the door behind her when she re-entered the school.
After her call disconnected, Marin said she hid beneath a counter, hearing repeated bursts of gunfire followed by silence. "A round would go off and then there was total silence. And then another round and total silence," she said, explaining that the pauses intensified her fear. She was visibly shaking as she recounted the experience.
During cross examination, the defense asked Marin if the door the gunman used to enter the school was unlocked. She said it was, but she hadn't known that.
Fourth-grade teacher Lynn Deming testified that her classroom was located in the same wing as the adjoining rooms where the deadliest violence occurred. She described the gunman firing through classroom windows from outside before entering the building, shattering glass and sending her students into panic. Deming said she tried to position the children where she believed they would be safest but quickly began second-guessing that decision.
"I thought I'd put the kids in the worst place," Deming testified. "I thought I made the worst mistake I had ever made."
Deming told jurors that after the initial gunfire from outside her classroom, she later heard shots coming from the hallway. The shift in sound led her to believe there might be more than one shooter, intensifying her fear as she tried to keep her students quiet and calm with little information about what was happening.
Jurors also heard from FBI Special Agent Huy Nguyen, with the FBI's San Antonio field office, who testified about documenting shell casings and other physical evidence around the school. Nguyen described conducting systematic searches around the exterior of the building and marking the locations of spent casings and rifle rounds to help reconstruct where gunfire occurred.
Nguyen said each piece of evidence was photographed and logged to preserve an accurate record of the scene. Physical evidence confirmed gunfire occurred outside the school before the shooter entered the building, providing forensic context to eyewitness accounts. But Nguyen's testimony did not touch on law enforcement's responsibility.
Gonzales faces 29 felony counts of abandoning or endangering a child for his alleged inaction during the response that saw nearly 400 officers wait more than an hour to confront the gunman. If convicted, he faces up to two years in a Texas state jail.
The trial is being held in Corpus Christi after a judge approved a change of venue, citing concerns that Gonzales could not receive a fair and impartial jury in Uvalde because of the case's extensive local impact.
The case marks the first major courtroom test of efforts to hold law enforcement officers criminally accountable for actions taken — or not taken — during the Robb Elementary School shooting response.
The trial is expected to continue for at least another week.
Former Uvalde CISD police chief Pete Arredondo is the only other officer to be indicted. He is awaiting a separate trial.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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