Families of Uvalde school shooting victims announce $2 million settlement with Texas city, new lawsuits

The family members of Victims of the Uvalde school shooting has reached a $2 million settlement with the Texas city for the deadly 2022 rampage, officials announced Wednesday. The group also said it was filing lawsuits against dozens of officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Uvalde School District. Among them is a $500 million federal lawsuit against nearly 100 state police officers who participated in the botched law enforcement response.

This announcement comes almost two years after the incident involving an armed teenager. killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. Law enforcement killed shooter in classroom after I waited over an hour to confront him, which was heavily criticized following the shooting.

As part of the settlement announced Wednesday, the city of Uvalde will pay a total of $2 million to the families of 17 children killed in the shooting and two children who survived, according to a statement from the families’ attorneys.

“Further legal action against the city could have pushed Uvalde into bankruptcy, which neither family was interested in as they sought to heal the community,” the statement said.

The money will come from the city’s insurance coverage, attorney Josh Koskoff told reporters at a news conference.

“These families could have filed a lawsuit against the city, and there are certainly grounds for a lawsuit,” Koskoff said. “Let’s be real, unfortunately we all saw what we saw… but instead of suing the city and putting anyone’s finances at risk, the families simply accepted the insurance.”

The city said the settlement will allow people to remember the shooting while “moving forward together as a community to bring healing and recovery to all those affected.”

“We will be forever grateful to the victims’ families for working with us over the past year to cultivate a community-wide healing environment that honors the lives and memories of those we tragically lost. lost,” the city said in a statement. “May 24 is our community’s greatest tragedy.”

The families were also working on a separate settlement with Uvalde County, Koskoff said.

Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-old daughter, Jackie Cazares, was killed in the shooting, said the past two years have been unbearable.

“We all know who took the lives of our children, but there was a clear systemic failure on May 24,” Cazares said. “The whole world has seen it. No amount of money is worth the lives of our children. Justice and accountability have always been my primary concern. We have been disappointed time and time again. Now is the time to do what we ‘it’s necessary.”

The settlement also includes the Uvalde Police Department committing to providing enhanced training to police officers and implementing a new standard for officers that will be developed in coordination with the U.S. Department of Justice, according to the family lawyers. The city has also committed to supporting mental health services for families, survivors and community members, creating a committee to coordinate with families on a permanent memorial and making May 24 an annual day of commemoration, in addition to taking other measures.

The families are also filing new lawsuits against 92 state Department of Public Safety and school district officers, including former Robb Elementary School principal Mandy Gutierrez and Pete Arredondothe school district police chief who was fired months after the shooting.

“Law enforcement did not treat the incident as an active shooter situation, even though they clearly knew there was an active shooter inside,” Wednesday’s statement said. “…The shooter was able to continue his killing spree for over an hour while helpless families waited anxiously outside the school.”

Koskoff said state officers at the scene could have done more to respond to the shooting. They acted “as if they had no business doing it, as if they didn’t know how to shoot someone, as if they weren’t heavily armed and best trained,” Koskoff said.

A Justice Department report released in January called the police response a failure.

“If law enforcement had followed generally accepted practices … lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters at the time.

At Wednesday’s news conference, Koskoff said the families would “ultimately” sue the federal government, noting that many federal law enforcement officers also responded to the shooting.

“There were over 150 federal agents who were also there and remained there until one or more entered the room after 77 minutes,” Koskoff said. “Of course it was a heroic act, it was a heroic act 77 minutes late.”