By Matthew J. Friedman, Shimon Prokupecz, Rachel Clarke

(CNN) — After nine days of testimony and calling 35 witnesses to the stand, the state on Tuesday rested its case against Adrian Gonzales, the former Uvalde school police officer who was first on scene at the Robb Elementary massacre in 2022, but Texas prosecutors say failed to delay or stop the killer.

Gonzales has pleaded not guilty to 29 counts of child endangerment or abandonment, one count for each of the 19 children who were killed and 10 who survived. It is only the second case ever brought against a school police officer for allegedly failing to act during an active shooter situation.

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

Through the testimony of teachers and parents, among others, prosecutors tried to show Gonzales was told a description of the gunman and where he was headed and had enough time to act.

They called the only surviving teacher from inside the room with the gunman, who showed his scars to the jury; the parents of children who were killed or wounded, who gave tearful and emotional testimony; medical experts, who described in disturbing detail how the gunman’s high-powered rifle obliterated the bodies of 9- and 10-year-olds; and a therapist, who testified about the psychological damage suffered by survivors.

Prosecutors also called several law enforcement officers who responded to the scene, showing some of their body camera footage that captured Gonzales, and others who testified as experts on active shooter response protocols.

The state’s final witness, a former Texas Ranger who created an animation of the first arriving officer’s movements, took more than four hours of intense cross-examination.

Gonzales’s defense attorney probed for inconsistencies in the former Ranger’s timeline and repeatedly questioned the actions of officers other than Gonzales as they arrived on the scene and whether they could have stopped the shooter.

The questioning drew repeated objections from prosecutors, and the judge admonished both sides for speaking to each other across the courtroom instead of directing objections to him.

Gonzales seemed mostly stoic while sitting at the defense table with his team of lawyers, at one point appearing to tear up when he heard descriptions of gunshot wounds treated by doctors at a nearby hospital.

Jury heard Gonzales admit to a ‘mistake’

A key piece of evidence shown to jurors was likely Gonzales’s own words, in a recorded interview with a Texas Ranger and an FBI agent taped the day after the shooting, while investigators tried to understand what happened and why it took law enforcement 77 minutes to stop the gunman.

In the interview, first reported by CNN before the trial began, jurors heard Gonzales admit he made a mistake when he arrived on campus and encountered a teacher’s aide who told him the gunman was dressed in all black and was trying to enter the school’s fourth-grade building.

“Now that I can sit back, I went tunnel vision, like I said, with the lady that was running,” Gonzales said in the hour-long video interview played for the jury. “That was my mistake.”

Gonzales also described in the video waiting for cover from other arriving officers and offered that as the reason he didn’t immediately enter the school and find the shooter.

Special prosecutor Bill Taylor said during his opening statement that Gonzales had the directions from the teacher’s aide and enough time to delay the gunman as he headed to the classrooms.

Jason Goss, one of Gonzales’s defense attorneys, asked the Texas Ranger who conducted the interview if he thought Gonzales misspoke amid the trauma of the previous hours.

“He said, ‘I made a mistake,’ but really he was mistaken about who the person was and what their intents were,” Goss said.

The Texas Ranger pushed back, saying he wouldn’t make assumptions about what Gonzales was thinking.

‘He just stayed there,’ witness testifies

Jurors also heard from teacher’s aide Melodye Flores – a key witness for the state – who provided the only firsthand testimony about what Gonzales did or didn’t do in the first few minutes as the shooting began.

Flores testified that she fell after seeing the gunman and, as she got up, a police vehicle drove up to her. She told the officer two or three times where the shooter was headed.

“I just kept pointing. ‘He’s going in there. He’s going into the fourth-grade building,’” she said she shouted. “He just stayed there,” she said of the officer. “He was pacing back and forth.” Flores said she could hear shots being fired.

Lead defense attorney Nico LaHood questioned Flores about inconsistencies in her statements, including descriptions of the officer and his patrol car that do not match Gonzales or his vehicle. He suggested she may have misremembered or misunderstood other aspects of what she experienced.

“There’s a lot going on in your mind at that time, right?” LaHood asked Flores. “You testified that (Gonzales) was just kind of pacing back and forth,” he said. “But he was getting out. He’s assessing you because you’re yelling things at him, right?”

Flores said she was unsure what Gonzales was doing, but she agreed with LaHood that she first spoke to investigators one week after the tragedy, during which time she had seen videos and reports about what happened.

Flores could be asked for more testimony later in the trial if the defense calls her back to the stand.

Emotions boiled over in the gallery

Throughout the trial so far, the one constant in the courtroom’s gallery has been the presence of bereaved family members of Robb Elementary victims.

At one point, Velma Duran yelled toward the defense table where Gonzales was sitting. 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. Another teacher was also killed.

Duran shouted from the back of the courtroom following tense defense questioning of a sheriff’s deputy about policies and procedures, such as how to avoid a “fatal funnel,” where a stack of officers could theoretically be shot by one attacker.

“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!”

The judge told the jury to disregard the outburst, and later admonished the gallery, including the family members present:

“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. And soon enough, if it continues, I will have no choice but to grant a mistrial. So please think about that.”

Gonzales’s defense to begin

Gonzales’s attorneys began their defense late Tuesday morning in the Corpus Christi courtroom.

In their opening statement, they argued Gonzales did everything he could during the massacre, including entering the fourth-grade building as shots were fired, warning others, obtaining keys and rescuing children through windows in surrounding classrooms.

Pretrial court filings show the defense had outlined a lengthy strategy and planned to call several witnesses, but it’s unclear how that has changed since the beginning of trial and upon seeing the state’s case in its entirety.

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