Teacher tells court she saw officer accused of failing to delay Uvalde school massacre: ‘He just stayed there’

(CNN) — A school employee testified Wednesday she saw both a teenage gunman and a police officer responding to an emergency before the 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Melodye Flores, a teaching aide who helped children with special needs, said she ran outside after hearing on her school radio that a man with a gun had come over the fence onto school property.

“That’s when I saw the shooter right there,” she said, pausing for several moments to compose herself.

It was one of several emotional points during the seventh day of the trial of former school district police officer Adrian Gonzales, which also saw testimony from the parents of injured children, a doctor who treated some of the young victims and another teacher who survived the massacre.

Gonzales has pleaded not guilty at trial to 29 counts of endangering or abandoning children. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the shooting. Another 10 children were left trapped with the gunman, who spent 77 minutes inside the school before he was killed by law enforcement officers who had stacked up in the hallway outside the classrooms.

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

Flores is a key witness for the state, providing the only firsthand testimony about what Gonzales did or didn’t do in the first few minutes as the shooting began.

Flores said 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 of what 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.

Prosecutors have said Gonzales had time and information — including details from Flores, revealed earlier this month by CNN — that could have allowed him to act. Defense attorneys argue Gonzales did everything he could during the massacre, including entering the fourth-grade building as shots were fired, warning others, getting keys, and rescuing children.

Nico LaHood, representing Gonzales, 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 said to 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?”

He continued about Gonzales’ actions: “Could that be that he was going behind the vehicle to get behind it?”

Flores said she was unsure what Gonzales was doing.

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.

Witnesses describe how children continue to relive horror of massacre

Later in the day the prosecution called a slew of witnesses, including parents of injured children, a doctor, a therapist, a firearms trainer and another fourth-grade teacher.

Jamie Torres said her daughter Khloie still had bullet fragments in her forehead and thigh after she was hit while trapped with the gunman in Room 112. “She gets headaches, frequently, and her leg — as she walks far, sometimes she says she has to stop.”

Christopher Salinas said his son Samuel, a classmate of Khloie, also complained of a lot of ongoing pain. He told the jury that since the massacre, the sound of doors slamming upsets his son, and he no longer liked the color red.

Jennifer Haby, a counselor who has worked with some of the survivors, said she had seen many things that trigger children to relive the horror they faced, including loud noises and the color red.

“It’s the color of blood,” she explained.

Dr. Cherie Hauptmeier recalled treating some of the injured children in the emergency room after the gunman was stopped and they were rescued from the classroom.

She described some horrific gunshot injuries to the young children, some of whom had to be transferred to a trauma center.

Gonzales, who has seemed stoic throughout the trial, appeared to be tearing up as he heard the descriptions of the wounds.

Mercedes Salas, then a fourth-grade teacher at Robb, said she texted her family when she heard the gunman outside her room: “Gunshots in the hallway. Pray for us.”

She said she heard more gunshots and smelled gunpowder. “I heard kids screaming. When they screamed, I heard the gunshots. And then I didn’t hear them anymore, so I knew something happened to them.”

When officers came to her window, she said she ignored them at first as they did not identify themselves as law enforcement. As her window was broken, she said she thought she would be killed, until she saw a baton. “So I figured, OK, these must be officers because who else would carry a baton?”

She said she helped all her students out through the window, and then scolded an officer as she went back to check that none were still hiding.

“I was like, ‘You need to wait. You just have to, I have to make sure none of my kids are in there.” She said she searched, found no more children and then said, “OK, I’m ready to go.”

“My kids were so brave, being so close to danger. They listened to my instructions to survive.”

Defense lawyer Goss had her confirm that she used to teach in Room 111 and that the shooter had been her student when he was in fourth grade.

“I don’t ask you that to cause you pain,” Goss told Salas. “I ask you that because 111 is a classroom like the other classrooms, but a person who’s been in 111 might know the features of 111 because they had been there.”

“Correct,” Salas responded, after which her testimony concluded.

On Tuesday, surviving teachers gave harrowing accounts of what happened, and a father who is a sheriff’s deputy for a neighboring county described his fear for his daughter and how he joined the team that eventually killed the gunman. Emotions spilled over in the public gallery when the sister of one of the teachers killed screamed out. The jury also heard Gonzales describe his actions in a video interview with investigators the day after the attack.

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