Uvalde Survivors File $27 Billion Lawsuit Against Texas Officials, Officers Over Response To Mass Shooting

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Survivors of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, have filed a $27 billion class-action lawsuit against multiple law enforcement officials in the state.

This comes six months after the killings, which were the deadliest U.S. school shooting in almost a decade. Nineteen children and two teachers we killed by the gunman in May.

The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. It names the city of Uvalde, its police department, the school district, the state Department of Public Safety, and several police and school officials as defendants.

The plaintiffs, which include parents, teachers, and staff members, are alleging that the officials failed to follow protocols for an active shooter, despite having received active shooter training and that they did not neutralize the shooter immediately, leading to further trauma and injuries.

“Law enforcement took seventy-seven minutes to accomplish what they were duty bound to expeditiously perform,” the lawsuit states.

“Not only had CISD-PD undertaken a state-sponsored and mandated active shooter response training, but CISD had additionally promulgated its own required protocols and standards to employ in the event of an active shooter on one of its campuses.

“Despite such preparedness, the CISD police department, along with similarly trained law enforcement agencies including the City of Uvalde’s police department, the Texas Department of Public Safety, San Antonio Police Department’s SWAT unit, Uvalde’s Sheriff’s office, and the United States Department of Homeland Security fundamentally strayed from conducting themselves in conformity with what they knew to be the well-established protocols and standards for responding to an active shooter,” the lawsuit added.

Officers Waited Over an Hour

Nearly 400 law enforcement officials arrived at the school on May 24 but opted to wait over 70 minutes to enter the fourth-grade classroom where gunman Salvador Ramos had locked himself in and take him down.

A 77-page report published in July by the Texas state House of Representatives found that there were multiple “shortcomings and failures” across the board by both law enforcement and UCISD in its response.

Plaintiffs are seeking damages for the survivors of the shooting, including parents whose children were killed and those who witnessed the deadly incident.

According to the lawsuit, plaintiffs “sustained emotional and psychological damages as a result of Defendants’ conduct” on the day of the shooting, while some of the children are suffering from severe anxiety and nightmares.

A string of lawsuits have been filed against the Uvalde school district and law enforcement officers since May.

Mother of Victim, 10, Files Lawsuit

Earlier this week, Sandra Torres, the mother of 10-year-old victim Eliahna sued over the response to the shooting.

The lawsuit names the city of Uvalde; the County of Uvalde; the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District; the Uvalde Police Department; Uvalde CISD Police; Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office; Uvalde Constables, and the Texas Department of Public Safety as defendants.