Nearly a month after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Rob Elementary School, shattering a community in West Texas, a number of key questions about police response remain unanswered – and some experts say the changing story of state and local leaders in the aftermath from slaughter can threaten to aggravate the trauma to those affected.
“This type of tragedy can tear communities apart,” said John Cohen, a former senior security official who now works for ABC News. “One of the ways the healing process can begin is for the community to have a clear understanding of what happened and what will be done to prevent something like this from happening again.
While the families of the victims put their loved ones to rest, the residents of Uwalde are still hoping for answers. They may start receiving a little on Tuesday when a Texas House committee meets to hear testimony about the shooting.
Here are five unanswered questions:
1) Was the classroom door locked?
From the first days after the attack, law enforcement officials said their response was hampered by the very measure introduced to protect children during active shooting: a locked door. Officials said the gunman entered the classroom and immediately locked the door behind him, leaving staff outside the room while waiting for reinforcements, supplies and a key that could open the “hardened” door, which could not be kicked. .
The gunman was left in the classroom for 77 minutes while 19 police officers waited in the hallway – and many more waited outside the building – after the incident commander mistakenly believed the situation had shifted from an active shooter to a barricaded site, law enforcement said.
The commander of the incident, Uwalde Police Chief Pete Aredondo, said in an interview that he had waited in the hallway while a porter brought dozens of keys, which he tried on the next door of the classroom in search of a master key – but none worked. . Eventually a worker came.
But now a surveillance video shows police never tried to open the classroom door where the attacker was, according to a San Antonio Express News report confirmed by ABC News sources, although ABC News did not. reviewed the footage. While school classroom doors are designed to lock automatically when closed, the report says new evidence suggests the door may have been unlocked at all times, although police believe it was locked.
Corridor officials also had access to a “lever-like tool” that could open the door, whether locked or not, the report said.
2) Has an active shooter signal reached the Robb community?
In recent decades, with the rise of mass shootings and advances in technology, school administrators and law enforcement agencies across the country have struggled to introduce safety protocols designed to warn staff and students in real time of a possible threat.
At Rob Elementary School, shortly before the shooter entered the building on the day of the shooting, a teacher used his smartphone to trigger an alert through the school’s emergency response app – called Raptor – according to the company that makes the alert system.
But whether the signal has successfully reached the Robb community remains unclear. Arnulfo Reyes, a teacher in one of the classrooms attacked by the shooter, said his Raptor app sometimes pings with alerts for nearby incidents – but that there was no warning on the day of the attack.
Police walk near Rob Elementary School after a shooting on May 24, 2022, in Uwalde, Texas.
Dario Lopez-Mills / AP
“You can hear the shots, but there was no announcement,” Reyes told ABC News in an exclusive interview this month. “I didn’t get anything and I didn’t hear anything.”
At 11:43 a.m. – ten minutes after the riot – Rob Elementary School posted on Facebook that the campus had been closed “due to gunfire in the area.”
3) Were employees informed about 911 calls from children in the classroom?
As officers waited outside the classroom for 77 minutes, children who were still alive in adjacent classrooms, the assailant attacker, repeatedly called 911 asking for help, officials said. There were numerous calls from 911 children inside, officials said, including one request, “Please send police now.”
Texas Public Safety Director Stephen McGraw said it appears the information may not have been passed on to officials on the spot, and Aredondo said in an interview that he was unaware of 911 calls while waiting in the hallway outside the classroom. room because he made his radio gone – which he said he deliberately left behind because he thought it would slow him down.
“That question will be answered,” McGraw said in the days after the shooting, when asked directly if the commander of the ground incident had received information about 911. “I will not share the information we have at the moment. now.”
A video obtained by ABC News last month, shot in front of Rob Elementary School as the massacre unfolds, appears to be filmed by a 911 dispatcher warning local staff of 911 calls they received from children in the classroom.
4) Were the responsible staff properly trained?
Seventy-seven minutes had passed since the shooter entered Rob Elementary School, while officers stormed the classroom and ended his deadly siege. Since then, law enforcement officials have faced intense scrutiny for their inability to act more quickly, raising questions about their level of preparedness.
Two months before the mass shooting, the Uwalde school district hosted an all-day training for local police and other law enforcement officials at the school, which focused on the “active response of shooters.” But basic training protocols – including those involving communication channels and the chain of command – have been ignored, law enforcement officials later said. Failure to provide important equipment, including shields and powerful weapons, may also have contributed to delays.
Eventually, officers at the scene used a key taken from a porter to unlock the door to the classroom where the shooter had barricaded himself. Cohen, a former Homeland Security official, said the fact that officers had to resort to such a simple method of breaking into a classroom after such a long time had a bad effect on officers’ planning.
“When developing an emergency response plan, it is deeply troubling that basic equipment – such as switches or other disruptive devices – seemed inaccessible,” Cohen said.
5) Do law enforcement officials cooperate in the investigation?
As investigations into the police response continued, questions arose as to whether Aredondo – who appears to be a key figure in the police response – was cooperating or not.
Texas Chamber of Commerce Chairman Dustin Burroughs said Friday that Aredondo has not yet agreed to testify before the commission, but said Monday that all law enforcement agencies are cooperating.
Uwalde Police Chief Pete Aredondo speaks at a press conference after the shooting at Rob Elementary School in Uwalde, Texas, May 24, 2022.
Mikala Compton / Austin American-Statesman through USA Today Networks, FILE
“The Uwalde Police Department has cooperated,” Burroughs said. Regarding Tuesday’s hearing, he said: “We will talk to another officer from Uvalde ISD [school district]. We will hear a member of the public safety department on the ground. “
“I want to at least congratulate all law enforcement agencies for the assistance and provision of witnesses we have requested,” Burroughs said.
On May 31, shortly after the shooting, the Texas Department of Public Safety said Aredondo had not responded “within days of a request for a follow-up interview” as part of the agency’s investigation into the police response to the massacre.
Aredondo’s lawyer disputed this characteristic, telling the Texas Tribune that Aredondo had participated in numerous interviews with the DPS in the days after the shooting, but could not come for another interview when requested because he covered shifts for other officers.
“At no point did he report his unwillingness to cooperate with the investigation,” Hyde said in an interview with the Texas Tribune. “His phone was flooded with calls and messages from numbers he did not recognize and may have missed DPS calls, but still maintains daily phone interaction with DPS, supporting logistics as requested.”
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