The survivors of the mass shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, have filed a $27 billion class-action lawsuit against the city, the school district, multiple law enforcement agencies and individual officers present that day.
The class-action lawsuit was filed, Tuesday — in federal court in Austin, TX — by parents, teachers and students who say they were present the day of the shooting and are seeking damages for “the indelible and forever-lasting trauma” endured from the horrific shooting.
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s police department, the Uvalde Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety, as well as individual officers from each of these agencies are listed in the lawsuit as defendants.
In the documents, the survivors say, “Law enforcement took seventy-seven minutes to accomplish what they were duty bound to expeditiously perform.”
Texas DPS Chief Steve McCraw, one of the highest ranked officers being sued, is included on that list. Parents of Robb Elementary School students have previously called on McCraw to resign. He maintains the agency as an institution did not fail in the response to the shooting.
According to the lawsuit, the survivors claim that “[i]nstead of swiftly implementing an organized and concerted response to an active school shooter who had breached the otherwise ‘secured’ school buildings at Robb Elementary school, the conduct of the three hundred and seventy-six (376) law enforcement officials who were on hand for the exhaustively torturous seventy-seven minutes of law enforcement indecision, dysfunction, and harm, fell exceedingly short of their duty bound standards.”
Some officers on scene that day, including Texas DPS Sgt. Juan Maldonado and Uvalde school district police chief Pete Arredondo, were terminated months after the shooting. The Uvalde school district also announced in October that their police department would be suspended.
19 children and 2 teachers were gunned down on May 24 at Robb Elementary, in Uvalde, Texas.
