Survivors of the fatal mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tx., have filed a $27 billion class action lawsuit against multiple law enforcement agencies in Texas, CNN reports. The lawsuit names the city, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, the school district’s police department, the Uvalde Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety and a number of persons who are members or former members of the agencies listed as defendants. The plaintiffs include parents and teachers and school staff members who were at the school May 24 when 19 students and two teachers were gunned down in adjoining classrooms a few days before school was to let out for the summer. At least 17 others were wounded.
A total of 376 law enforcement officers from multiple agencies responded to the massacre, the second deadliest shooting in a U.S. K-12 school. Officers waited 77 minutes after the shooter entered two adjoining classrooms before storming in and killing the gunman, an 18-year-old Uvalde resident. The lawsuit alleges the victims and survivors “sustained emotional and psychological damages as a result of Defendants’ conduct and omissions” as a result of the shooting. The lawsuit charges 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.” The civil complaint is at least the third involving the massacre that seeks damages from a number of parties. One federal lawsuit filed this week alleges nearly two dozen people and entities, including the gun manufacturer and store that provided the rifle used in the attack, were negligent and failed to protect a student who was killed.