Survivors of the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX that killed 19 fourth graders and two teachers have filed a class action lawsuit against the school district, its police department and state officials for $27 billion.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in federal court in Austin. It lists the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s police department, the Uvalde Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), and several individual officers from each of these agencies as defendants.
Texas DPS Chief Steve McCraw, one of the highest ranked officers, is among those being sued. There have been growing calls among Robb Elementary School parents for McCraw to resign. He blames the agency as an institution for failing to adequately respond to the mass shooting.
A total of 376 law enforcement officers from multiple agencies responded to the massacre. The armed law enforcement waited 77 minutes after the shooter had entered two adjoining classrooms before storming in and killing the gunman, an 18-year-old Uvalde resident.
The lawsuit asserts that despite active shooter training, law enforcement “fundamentally strayed from conducting themselves in conformity with what they knew to be the well-established protocols and standards for responding to an active shooter.”
Parents, teachers, school staff and students who were on scene on May 24 are listed as plaintiffs. They are demanding redress for “the indelible and forever-lasting trauma.”
Uvalde is the second deadliest elementary school shooting in U.S. history, after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook.
Representatives for the Uvalde school district as well as the Texas DPS did not immediately return reporters’ requests for comment.
