Thursday, May 23, 2024 - The city of Uvalde has reached a $2 million settlement with families of the victims of a 2022 mass shooting at a public school in the Texas city, one of the lawyers of the victims said on Wednesday, May 22.
The announcement comes nearly two years after a teenage
gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. Law
enforcement officers killed the gunman in a classroom after waiting more than
an hour to confront him, which was heavily criticized in the wake of the
shooting.
In 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.
"Pursuing further legal
action against the City could have plunged Uvalde into bankruptcy, something
that none of the families were interested in as they look for the community to
heal," 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 pursued a lawsuit against the city, and there's certainly grounds for a
lawsuit," Koskoff said. "Let's face it, sadly, we all saw what we saw
… but instead of suing the city and jeopardizing the finances of anybody, the
families have accepted simply 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 restoration to all those affected."
"We will forever be
grateful to the victims' families for working with us over the past year to
cultivate an environment of community-wide healing that honours the lives and
memories of those we tragically lost," the city said in a statement. "May
24th 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 last two years have been unbearable.
"We all know who took
our children's lives, but there was an obvious systemic failure out there on
May 24," Cazares said. "The whole world saw that. No amount of money
is worth the lives of our children. Justice and accountability have always been
my main concern. We've been let down so many times. The time has come to do the
right thing."
The settlement also includes the Uvalde Police Department committing to provide enhanced training for police officers and implement a new standard for officers to be developed in coordination with the U.S. Justice Department, according to the families' attorneys. The city also committed to supporting mental health services for the families, survivors and community members, creating a committee to coordinate with the families on a permanent memorial and establishing May 24 as an annual day of remembrance, in addition to taking other measures.
The families are also taking new legal action against 92
state Department of Public Safety officers and the school district, including
former Robb Elementary School principal Mandy Gutierrez and Pete Arredondo, the
school district's police chief who was fired months after the shooting.
"Law enforcement did not
treat the incident as an active shooter situation, despite clear knowledge that
there was an active shooter inside," Wednesday's statement said. "...
The shooter was able to continue the killing spree for over an hour while
helpless families waited anxiously outside the school."
Koskoff said the state's officers on the scene could have
done more to respond to the shooting.
They acted "as if they
had nothing to do as if they didn't know how to shoot somebody, as if they
weren't heavily armed and the most well-trained," Koskoff said.
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