Uvalde shooting victims’ announce $2 million settlement, further lawsuits against public safety officers

Family members of victims in the deadly 2022 Uvalde, Texas, school shooting have reached a settlement with the city, but plan additional litigation against responding officers, according to the attorneys representing the families.

Uvalde police were heavily criticized over their response to the 2022 shooting, as they waited more than one hour to confront the shooter after he had killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. The city of Uvalde has agreed to pay a $2 million split across the families of 17 children killed in the shooting as well as to the families of two children who were injured, according to CBS News.

A January Department of Justice report found that “cascading failures of leadership” occurred as Uvalde police were responding to the 2022 shooting. “The most significant failure was that responding officers should have immediately recognized the incident as an active shooter situation, using the resources and equipment that were sufficient to push forward immediately and continuously toward the threat until entry was made into classrooms 111/112 and the threat was eliminated,” the report reads.

It took responding officers 77 minutes to approach and kill the shooter after arriving at the scene.

The settlement also includes provisions requiring enhanced police training in Uvalde, mental health services for the community, and the beginning of a process to establish a memorial, CBS News reported.

“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 families’ attorneys said, explaining why they accepted the settlement.

While the families aren’t pursuing further legal action against the city, they are suing 92 police officers, according to their lawyers. “Law enforcement did not treat the incident as an active shooter situation, despite clear knowledge that there was an active shooter inside,” the attorneys said.

An independent investigator in March cleared local police officers of policy violations related to their delayed response.

The city of Uvalde did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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