HOUSTON — The first comprehensive assessment of law enforcement’s response to the deadly School shooting in Uvalde, Texasfound that officers from local, state and federal agencies failed to act quickly, a wide-ranging charge of policing at Robb Elementary School.
The 77-page report, released Sunday by a Texas House special committee, widely spread responsibility for “system failures” among the dozens of officers who responded and those waiting outside a pair of connected classrooms where the gunman killed 19 children and two teachers. killed.
The decision to finally confront the gunman was made by a small group of officers, including specially trained Border Patrol officers and a deputy sheriff from a neighboring county, the report found, concluding that the warrant could have been issued much earlier by other officers at the scene.
The findings represented the most complete external record of what happened in the 77 minutes between when the gunman began firing in the classrooms and when police finally stormed in and ended the May 24 massacre.
But a flawless police response would not have saved most of the victims, the report found, who suffered devastating injuries when they were shot with a high-powered AR-15-style rifle by a gunman who had been waiting for his 18th birthday to shoot. buy the weapon legally.
But some survived but died on the way to hospital, the report noted, adding in a final footnote that “it is plausible that some victims could have survived had they not had to wait” for rescue.
Federal legislation proposed by Congress in the wake of the Uvalde massacre would not have prevented the gunman, Salvador Ramos, from obtaining the weapon he used, nor any other weapon he also bought with the help of an uncle, who teen gunman to get hold of gun. guns because he couldn’t drive.
The shooter had no documented history that would have prevented him from purchasing a weapon, even under a “red flag” law, based on the facts gathered by lawmakers. The Republican-controlled Texas legislature was unwilling to consider any legislation restricting firearms in response to the Uvalde shooting, and paid close attention to police response and school safety in public hearings. .
But the report did serve to clarify and reinforce what was an often mixed official account of events at the school. How those events unfolded was unclear even to many of the participants, the report found.
For example, one of the first officers at the school, a Uvalde police officer armed with an AR-style rifle, arrived at the sound of gunshots and saw a person dressed in black. The officer took cover, assuming the person was the shooter, and later… told other officers who responded and investigators that he had not attempted to shoot the person because of children nearby.
But the person was not the shooter, the report found, but rather a school coach who helped children to safety.
The commission came to a more comprehensive conclusion about the nature of the failures than that of State Police Director Steven McCraw, who in his public statements put the blame squarely on the school’s chief of police, Pete Arredondo.
The report found that the “outrageously bad decision-making” went beyond Mr. Arredondo and the dozens of well-armed agents of Mr. McCraw’s own agency, the Department of Public Safety, as well as the US Border Patrol’s scores.
While many of the officers interviewed by the commission said they regarded Mr Arredondo as the incident commander, others said they did not know who was in charge, the report said, creating a chaotic vacuum of leadership that engulfed the greater state and federal agencies could have moved to fill, but didn’t.
“Despite an apparent atmosphere of chaos, senior officers from other responding agencies did not approach the Uvalde CISD chief of police,” the report said, referring to Mr Arredondo, “or anyone else in charge to point out the lack of and need for a command post, or to provide that specific assistance.”
But even as the details became clearer, the larger outlines of what is known about the deadly event remained the same: The gunman entered the school without being confronted by an officer, through an unlocked door, and went straight to the classrooms where he started shooting.
As shown in a surveillance video released as part of the report, local police officers, including Mr. Arredondo, minutes later, retreated into a hallway after being greeted with gunshots at the doorway of one of the classrooms. Even as more heavily armed officers arrived, along with ballistic shields, they tried not to enter the classroom for over an hour.
That was the “wrong decision,” Mr McCraw said the following days, saying the call was made by Mr Arredondo, who he said was the incident commander.
Mr Arredondo has said he did not envision himself in that role during the massacre and thought someone else would take that role. But the commission found that, based on the school district’s own action plan for a school shooting, he should have done, calling for the school’s police chief to “become the person in charge of the efforts of all law enforcement officers and first responders arriving at the scene.”
The three-member committee that drafted the report consisted of two members of the State House, Dustin Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock, and Joe Moody, a Democrat in El Paso, as well as a former state Supreme Court justice Eva Guzman, who recently had a failed Republican leadership. first bid for attorney general.
Selina Silguero, whose niece, Jailah Nicole Silguero, died in the shooting, said the devastating details in the report dealt another blow to the families of the dead. “We are very angry about everything,” Ms Silguero said on Sunday. “We want all these people who were in the building to be held accountable. It’s not right what they’ve done. I mean, they had all the gear with them and our kids had nothing to protect themselves with that big old gun he had.”
Ms Silguero said she felt betrayed after learning that local and state officials were trying to minimize response failures days after the massacre. Watching the video watch dozens of officers from various agencies standing in the hallway as children screamed for help broke her heart, she said.
“They had big guns and shields and stuff,” she said. “They want to cover it up and point the finger at each other. I want it all, we all want it, that they be fired and charged.”
Jailah, who was 10 and an avid basketball player, was looking forward to joining a softball team next year. “We told her we’d be registering her next year. But there won’t be next year because they took our baby.”