Dead teacher’s sister disrupts trial of former Uvalde school district police officer

By Shimon Prokupecz, Matthew J. Friedman, Rachel Clarke, CNN

(CNN) — The distraught sister of a teacher killed in the Uvalde school massacre screamed during the trial of an officer accused of not doing enough to stop the shooter.

Velma Duran yelled toward the defense table where former Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District police officer Adrian Gonzales was sitting.

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the May 2022 massacre. Her sister, Irma Garcia, was shot and killed in Room 112 of Robb Elementary School as she tried to protect her fourth-grade students, some of whom survived.

The attack remains one of the deadliest US school shootings, a continuing scourge that has spurred security measures in classrooms across America.

Prosecutors say Gonzales was told where the shooter was heading before he entered Garcia’s building and failed to delay or distract him. Gonzales has pleaded not guilty to 29 counts of endangering or abandoning a child.

As the judge dismissed a witness, Duran spoke from the back of the courtroom in Corpus Christi, Texas.

“You know who went into the ‘fatal funnel’? My sister went into the ‘fatal funnel,’” she said loudly and clearly as Judge Sid Harle began to admonish her.

“Did she need a key? Why do you need a key? Wasn’t it locked?” she cried out in an increasingly distressed voice as she was taken from the public gallery. “Y’all saying she didn’t lock her door. She went into the … she went into the ‘fatal funnel’. She did it! Not you!” she screamed.

The judge told the jury to disregard the outbreak, which happened at the end of the morning sessions, after a father who was a sheriff’s deputy for a neighboring county testified he went to the school because his daughter was there and ended up in the team that killed the gunman because “Nobody stopped me.”

The prosecution has included witnesses to testify about what happened after the gunman entered the classrooms, though that is not the period for which they are seeking a conviction of Gonzales.

Defense lawyers have asked every law enforcement witness to discuss policies and procedures, such as how to avoid a “fatal funnel,” where a stack of officers could theoretically be shot by one attacker.

They have posed hypothetical questions about how witnesses might have reacted in the same situation their client faced. They have also highlighted what Gonzales did during the 77 minutes the gunman was inside the classrooms, such as calling for help, finding a map, and helping evacuate students from other parts of the school.

Duran wailed as she left the courtroom. Her brother-in-law suffered a heart attack two days after his wife was killed, dying from what the family called a broken heart.

The judge sent the jury to lunch and then addressed the court, including the family members in attendance.

“I want this case to go to verdict. Any further outburst will just echo the attempt for another motion for mistrial,” Harle said. “So please think about that. We’re trying to get this case to the jury and these are not helping. Soon enough, if it continues, I will have no choice but to grant a mistrial. So please think about that.”

Earlier in the trial, he advised bereaved relatives when distressing testimony, images or videos would be presented and warned them to leave if they felt unable to control themselves.

During emotional recountings of what happened at Robb Elementary, both family members and court watchers in the gallery have wept quietly.

Duran will not be allowed back in court for the rest of the trial.

Here’s what happened earlier on Tuesday:

• Desperate father helped kill gunman: A father who was in law enforcement told the jury how he joined the team that entered a classroom and killed the gunman responsible for the Uvalde school massacre.

Joe Vasquez testified that he worked for a neighboring county and was off duty but went straight to his daughter’s school, Robb Elementary, as soon as he heard about the shooting.

He got his rifle and put on a protective vest, then weaved through officers already at the scene to enter the hallway where responders were lined up and waiting.

“Nobody stopped me,” he said.

He choked back emotion as he described not knowing where his daughter was. He said he then joined the group of officers who opened the classroom door, found the gunman and shot him, again with no one stopping him.

“I was expecting to get shot,” he said.

He saw the child victims, all fourth-graders, and thought they looked bigger than his daughter, who was in second grade at the time.

As officers entered the classrooms after the shooter was dead, Vasquez left to find his daughter, who was safe and had been evacuated. He then realized he had fired his own weapon at the gunman and needed to return to the school to hand it over to investigators.

• Teacher wanted to comfort her students: Elsa Avila stood up to tell some of her students to hide farther from the window when they heard gunfire at their elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

“As I stood there, and I was waving them over, that’s when — we were hearing shots, and I felt a shot on my left side,” she said.

“I felt the pain. I felt the burning pain, and I know I yelled, ‘Oh no, I’m shot.’ And I fell to the floor.”

Avila, a fourth-grade teacher at Robb Elementary, which was targeted by a teenage gunman, said Tuesday she managed to text for help as she lay on the floor and then thought of her students.

She said she was in immense pain and her legs were shaking, suggesting to her that she was going into shock. So she prayed, “Don’t let me die in front of my students.”

“I couldn’t do anything; I couldn’t comfort them,” Avila said, breaking down into tears.

Later that day, she helped push her students to law enforcement officers through a window before she was helped out. With no stretcher available, she had to walk to an ambulance, she said.

The response to the shooting has faced widespread criticism, not only for the actions of law enforcement but also for the medical response and crime scene investigation.

But the case against Gonzales focuses on the first minutes, as both the gunman and Gonzales arrived on campus.

Avila retired from teaching after the attack, saying she could not even step inside a school. But she missed working with students so much, she said, that she resumed her career, this time at a private parochial school.

• Surviving teacher said his door was not locked: Former teacher Arnulfo Reyes was questioned repeatedly in court Tuesday about how doors were left open at Robb Elementary.

Reyes, the only survivor in his classroom, and called to testify by prosecutors who have accused Gonzales of failing to do enough to stop or delay the shooter.

Defense attorney Nico LaHood had Reyes confirm that the door to his classroom was not locked on the day of the massacre, when Reyes saw sheetrock flying amid gunfire and told his students to hide.

“Hiding the kids isn’t as effective if that door is not locked,” LaHood said, then asking Reyes: “The fact that the door was not locked had an effect on the gunman entering the room?”

“Yes,” Reyes replied.

LaHood also questioned how well the children were hidden in Room 111. They were underneath tables, but unlike in the classroom next door, there were no curtains around the table edges to shield them from view, he said, and Reyes agreed.

Teachers testified earlier in the trial that some rooms had curtains on the tables around the edges to cover supplies stored there.

Reyes said the lights were off in the room and the children went where they were trained to go.

Reyes testified Monday that “a black shadow” holding a gun entered his classroom and shot him, then all the children hid under furniture.

Eleven students were killed in Reyes’ classroom and eight more in a connected classroom. Two teachers died after being shot in the next-door classroom. Ten of their students survived the massacre. It took 77 minutes for the gunman to be stopped by the hundreds of law enforcement officers who converged on the scene after he entered the school.

Reyes has pictures of all the students who were killed on the fence outside his home in Uvalde. On Monday, he looked at photos displayed in court of those who died and the 10 who survived, naming each for the jury.

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