Families of Uvalde victims reach $2m settlement with city

Families of children killed and injured in the 2022 Uvalde, Texas mass shooting have announced a $2m (£1.57m) settlement with the city, days before the anniversary of the massacre.

Nineteen children and two teachers were shot when an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School, with police taking more than an hour to stop him.

Multiple lawsuits were filed against Uvalde’s police and local officials over what the Justice Department has described as a chaotic and disorganized response.

The $2m going to families of the 17 children killed and two who survived “demonstrates compassion and respect” without plunging the small city of Uvalde into bankruptcy, their attorney, Josh Koskoff, said.

“The last thing that they would want to do is inflict financial hardship on their friends and neighbours,” he told a news conference on Wednesday.

“There’s not enough money in this city,” he added.

A Justice Department report published in January found that a “lack of urgency” plagued the response by more than 370 officers from various local, state and federal departments. They waited over 70 minutes before confronting the culprit, who was eventually shot and killed.

The settlement also includes additional training and “fitness for duty” standards for Uvalde police officers, mental health services for the community, and creation of a committee to coordinate a permanent memorial.

Additionally, the families announced that they will be taking new legal action against 92 individual officers from the state’s Department of Public Safety for “shocking and extensive failures” during the shooting response.

Mr Koskoff – who previously represented family members of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting – said that the state of Texas has “done nothing at all” to help Uvalde, and “blamed the least-equipped” local officers for what took place.

The lawsuit also names the local school district, then-principal Mandy Gutierrez and former school police chief Pedro Arredondo as defendants.

“There was an obvious failure on May 24. The whole world saw that,” said Javier Cazares, whose nine-year-old daughter Jackie was killed in the shooting.

“The time has come to do the right thing,” he added.

Looking to the future, Mr Koskoff said that a separate lawsuit would be filed against the federal government for its alleged failures during the response.

The 600-page Justice Department report found that police had failed to understand there was an active shooter and there were “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training”.

The report also described a “great deal of confusion, miscommunication, a lack of urgency and a lack of incident command” as the shooting unfolded.

A separate report – commissioned by the city and published in March – found that officers had acted in good faith and committed no serious acts of misconduct.

That investigation prompted a furious response from some of the victims’ families.

The Uvalde district attorney’s office is also investigating the police response as a criminal matter, with a grand jury called earlier this year.

Several officials have been called to testify in that probe.

The chief of police for Uvalde schools, Joshua Gutierrez, submitted his resignation on Wednesday less than two years after his predecessor, Mr Arredondo, was fired for his inaction during the response to the shooting.

No reason was given for Mr Gutierrez’s resignation.