UVALDE, Texas — Civil rights attorney Charles Bonner on Sunday announced a class-action lawsuit seeking accountability for the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School that left 19 students and two teachers dead in Uvalde, Texas.
“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,” Bonner of San Francisco-based Bonner & Bonner Law told KSAT-TV.
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Bonner is targeting several law enforcement agencies as well as the manufacturer of the gun used in the deadly mass shooting with the lawsuit. According to WOAI-TV, the suit targets the following individuals and agencies:
- Daniel Defense, the gun manufacturer used by 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, identified by authorities as the Uvalde gunman.
- Oasis Outback, the shop where Ramos picked up the gun.
- Ramos’ uncle, who drove him to the gun shop.
- Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department.
- Uvalde Police Department.
- Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office.
- Texas Department of Public Safety.
- U.S. 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,” Bonner told KSAT.
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According to the TV station, Bonner and his associates have been traveling to Uvalde from their California office for weeks, meeting with families at Tabernacle of Worship.
“Up to right now, there’s been no accountability, there’s no justice for those 19 children and the two teachers,” the church’s pastor, Daniel Myers, told KSAT.
Specifically, Bonner intends to sue on the basis that the victims, survivors and their families had their 14th Amendment rights violated.
“People have a right to life under the 14th Amendment, and what we’ve seen here is that the law enforcement agencies have shown a deliberate, conscious disregard of the life,” Bonner told the TV station.
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When asked how he arrived at the $27 billion figure, Bonner told WOAI that it’s because “we have to make it too expensive for them to continue to do nothing.”
Bonner also confirmed that the class action lawsuit will not be filed until close to the end of September, the TV station reported.