The families of victims of the Uvalde mass shooting are filing a sweeping $27bn class action lawsuit against multiple law enforcement agencies, the school district and the manufacturer of the gun used in the attack.
Civil rights attorney Charles Bonner announced on Monday that he plans to sue anyone who holds some responsibility for the 24 May massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Nineteen innocent students aged just nine to 11 years old and two heroic teachers were murdered that day when 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos entered the school and opened fire with an AR-15.
Three months on, grieving families continue to wait for answers as it emerged there were many fatal errors both that day and in the lead-up to the massacre.
Mr Bonner said that the lawsuit will include the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, gunmaker Daniel Defense which made the AR-15 used to murder the 21 victims and gun store Oasis Outback where Ramos was able to legally purchase it.
It will also include all of the different law enforcement agencies who responded to the scene of the mass shooting including the Department of Public Safety, Uvalde School Police and Uvalde City Police.
“What we intend to do (is) to help serve this community, and that is to file a $27 billion civil rights lawsuit under our United States Constitution, one-of-a-kind in the whole world,” Mr Bonner told KSAT.
“We have the school police, OK, Arredondo, we have the city police, and we have the sheriffs and we have the Texas Rangers, the DPS and we have the Border Patrol.
“There will be some institutional defendants as well, such as school board or such as City Council or such as the City of the Uvalde.”
The attorney said that he wanted to get some “accountability” for the families who lost their loved ones in what is one of the worst school shootings in US history.
He also hopes it will help prevent other mass shootings from happening in future.
“Everyone in this world are hurting and bleeding about what is happening here in Uvalde. And it’s up to us to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
The huge lawsuit – which will also involve gun safety organisation Everytown – is expected to be filed in September after the US Justice Department releases the findings of its investigation into the massacre.
Several separate probes have been launched into the failings that day.
Last month, the Texas House committee investigating the massacre released its bombshell report where it slammed the “lackadaisical approach” of law enforcement and cited failings from almost all authorities involved that day.
The Texas House committee’s 77-page report revealed that a staggering 376 law enforcement officers descended on Robb Elementary School to respond to what became the worst mass shooting in Texas history.
Among them was 149 US Border Patrol, 91 state police, 25 Uvalde police officers, 16 sheriff’s deputies and five Uvalde school police officers.
The remaining were federal Drug Enforcement Agency officers, US Marshals and police officers who responded from neighbouring counties.
In the damning report, the law enforcement response was described as “chaos” where there was no clear leadership and officers on the scene “failed to prioritise saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety”.
“There was an overall lackadaisical approach by law enforcement at the scene. For many, that was because they were given and relied upon inaccurate information. For others, they had enough information to know better,” the report states.
As a result, a staggering 77 minutes passed from the time when Ramos entered the school at 11.33am and began shooting innocent victims to the time when an elite Border Patrol unit finally breached the classroom and shot him dead at 12.50pm.
Damning surveillance footage shows dozens of armed officers standing in the hallways outside the classroom failing to take action.
The Texas House committee report stated that it was “plausible” that the lengthy delay in taking action cost the lives of some of the victims bleeding out inside the room.
One teacher died of her injuries in an ambulance while three children died after reaching hospital.
To date, only two law enforcement officers are known to have faced any disciplinary action over the bungled law enforcement response.
Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo, the on-site commander of the incident, has shouldered much of the blame as he failed to send law enforcement officers into the classroom to confront the gunman.
He was placed on administrative leave in June, with calls growing for him to be fired.
In July, Acting Chief of the Uvalde Police Lt Mariano Pargas was then suspended after the Texas House committee report found that the department disregarded its own active shooting training that day.
The Uvalde City Council has also announced its own investigation into every single one of the 25 Uvalde Police Department officers who responded to the shooting.
The city council investigation is expected to take around two months.
