OAN’s James Meyers
10:18 AM – Thursday, May 23, 2024
Nineteen families of the students and teachers killed or injured at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, announced Wednesday that they have settled a lawsuit with the city for $2 million.
Advertisement
The group also said they’re filing lawsuits against dozens of Texas Department of Public Safety officers and Uvalde’s school district. Among those lawsuits is a $500 million federal suit against almost 100 state police officers who were involved in the response efforts to the school shooting.
“It has been an unbearable two years,” Javier Cazares, the father of 9-year-old victim Jacklyn Cazares, said at a news conference. “We all know who took our children’s lives, but there was an obvious systemic failure out there on May 24. The whole world saw that.”
“No amount of money is worth the lives of our children. Justice and accountability has always been my main concern. We’ve been let down so many times, that time has come to do the right thing,” he said.
City officials confirmed the settlement in a statement.
“Today, we are thankful to join the victims’ families in arriving at an agreement that will allow us to remember the Robb Elementary tragedy while moving forward together as a community to bring healing and restoration to all those affected,” the city said. “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 honors the lives and memories of those we tragically lost. May 24th is our community’s greatest tragedy.”
The settlement comes just before the two-year anniversary of the tragic mass shooting, in which an 18-year-old rushed into the elementary school, killing 19 children and two teachers as he barricaded himself into a classroom.
Meanwhile, a total of 376 law enforcement officers in the area hurried to the school to respond, but strangely, none of them went inside to confront the shooter for at least 77 minutes.
Uvalde will pay the families a total of $2 million from its insurance coverage as part of the settlement, according to a statement from attorneys Josh Koskoff and Erin Rogiers.
As a result of the tragedy, the city has also since pledged to institute several policy changes to the police department. The city established May 24th as an annual “Day of Remembrance,” creating a coordination committee to design a permanent memorial which will provide mental health services for the families, survivors, and community members.
It will also establish a new “fitness for duty” standard for police officers.
The terms of the settlement were reached through a “restorative justice process” between the families and the city. The attorneys claimed that pursuing further legal action could have bankrupted the city of Uvalde, which none of the families wanted.
Koskoff said in a statement that the settlement is a healing measure, and one mother of a student who was killed said that it reflected a “good faith effort.”
“For two long years, we have languished in pain and without any accountability from the law enforcement agencies and officers who allowed our families to be destroyed that day. This settlement reflects a first good faith effort by the City of Uvalde to begin rebuilding trust in the systems that failed to protect us,” Veronica Luevanos, whose daughter Jailah and nephew Jayce were killed, said in a statement.
“But it wasn’t just Uvalde officers who failed us that day. Nearly 100 officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety have yet to face a shred of accountability for cowering in fear while my daughter and nephew bled to death in their classroom.”
Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts