By Shimon Prokupecz, Matthew J. Friedman, Rachel Clarke, CNN
(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.
Flores said she fell 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.
Former school district police officer Adrian Gonzales 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.
Prosecutors have said Gonzales had time and information — including details from Flores, Read more