The families of three children who survived the fatal shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, filed the first related lawsuit in a federal court since the May massacre.
The suit, filed on Wednesday in Texas’s Western District Court, is seeking undetermined damages from the Uvalde school district, law enforcement officials, gunmakers, and others. The plaintiffs allege that negligence from the respected parties contributed to the fatalities, which included 19 children and two adults.
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“We are after accountability and damages, and because my plaintiffs are young, they will have to deal with the trauma of what they went through,” Stephanie Sherman, the lead attorney for the families, told the Texas Tribune. “It’s just a perfect soup of lack of care, and I can’t help but think this poor community was not protected in any way.”
The families allege that students were both physically and emotionally harmed by the incident, in which one student was shot in the leg and another witnessed the shooter firing the gun while moving toward the nurse station, according to San Antonio Express News.
A total of 10 defendants were named in the suit, including the city of Uvalde and then-police Chief Pete Arredondo, who has since been fired. Gunmaker Daniel Defense was also listed as a defendant.
The defendants were given a notice of the impending suit last month claiming the suit would seek $27 billion in compensation for the families and funding for mental health resources. The claim cited a Texas House report that determined the police department “failed to exercise command and control of law enforcement.”
The lawsuit comes four months after the deadly shooting on May 24. Law enforcement, particularly Arredondo, have faced intense criticism over the question of why it took more than 70 minutes to confront and kill 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, the alleged gunman.
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Students in Uvalde returned to school earlier this month for the first time since the shooting. Robb Elementary School, where the shooting took place, has been permanently closed. Students from the school were distributed among three other elementary schools in the area.
