Nearly 400 law enforcement officers rushed to a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, but “system errors” created a chaotic scene that lasted more than an hour before the gunman who claimed 21 lives was finally confronted and killed, according to a report by investigators, released Sunday.
The nearly 80-page report was the first to criticize both state and federal law enforcement, not just local authorities in the Texas city, for the baffling inaction of heavily armed officers when a gunman opened fire in a fourth-grade classroom.
“At Robb Elementary, law enforcement officers failed to adhere to their active shooter training and failed to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety,” the report said.
The shooter fired an estimated 142 shots inside the building and it is “almost certain” that 100 shots came before any officers entered, according to the report.
The report — the most complete account yet of the hesitant and haphazard response to the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School — was written by a Texas House of Representatives investigative committee and released to family members Sunday.
Grace Valencia cries as she talks to reporters after picking up a copy of the investigative committee’s report at the Texas House in Uvalde, Texas, on Sunday. Her great niece, Uzia Valencia, was one of the 21 victims of the shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24. (Eric Gay/Associated Press)
According to the report, 376 law enforcement officers converged on the school. The overwhelming majority of those who responded were federal and state law enforcement agencies. That includes nearly 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 91 state police officers.
“Other than the assailant, the commission did not find any ‘villains’ in the course of its investigation,” the report said. “There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or bad motives. Instead, we found systemic failures and extremely poor decision-making.”
The report noted that many of the hundreds of law enforcement officers who rushed to the school were better trained and equipped than the school district police — which the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, State Police, previously accused of for not entering the room sooner.
“In this crisis, none of those responsible took advantage of the initiative to establish an incident command post,” the report said.
A spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety did not immediately return a request for comment Sunday.
The police chief wastes time looking for a key
No police officer has received as much scrutiny since the shooting as Pete Arredondo, Uvalde’s school police chief, who resigned from his newly appointed seat on the city council after the shooting.
Arredondo told the committee he treated the shooter as a “barricaded subject,” according to the report, and defended never treating the scene as an active shooter situation because he had no visual contact with the shooter.
Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo, pictured in Uvalde on May 24, was placed on administrative leave last month over his handling of the school shooting. (Mikala Compton//USA Today Network/Reuters)
Arredondo also tried to find a key to the classrooms, but no one ever bothered to see if the doors were locked, according to the report.
“Arredondo’s search for a key consumed his attention and wasted valuable time, delaying the infiltration of classrooms,” the report said.
The report criticized as “negligent” the approach of the hundreds of officers who surrounded the school and said they should have recognized that Arredondo remaining at the school without reliable communication was “inconsistent” with him being the scene commander.
The report concluded that some officers waited because they relied on bad information, while others “had enough information to know better”.
Families respond to new report
Family members of the Uvalde victims received copies of the report Sunday before it was released.
“This is a joke. They are a joke. They have no business wearing a badge. None of them have,” Vincent Salazar, the grandfather of 11-year-old Leila Salazar, said Sunday.
Vincent Salazar holds a copy of the report released by the Texas House Investigative Committee in Uvalde on Sunday. His granddaughter, Leila Salazar, was killed in the shooting at Robb Elementary School. (Eric Gay/Associated Press)
Some of the victims’ families were scheduled to hold a press conference at 5:00 PM ET on Sunday.
The report followed weeks of closed-door interviews with more than 40 people, including witnesses and law enforcement, who were at the scene of the shooting.
Flowers that had been piled high in the city’s central square had been removed since Sunday, leaving several cards of stuffed animals scattered around the fountains, along with photos of some of the children killed.
School video sparks fresh criticism
A nearly 80-minute corridor surveillance video released by the Austin American-Statesman this week showed publicly for the first time a hesitant and haphazard tactical response that the head of the Texas State Police condemned as a failure and some Uvalde residents called cowardly.
In this still image taken from surveillance video at Robb Elementary School on May 24, law enforcement officers are told to stand back as gunshots ring out in the hallway. The video was obtained by the Austin American-Statesman newspaper. (Austin American-Statesman/Reuters)
After the shooting in Uvalde, calls for police accountability became more frequent. So far, only one police officer from the scene of the deadliest school shooting in Texas history is known to be on leave.
The report is the result of one of several investigations into the shooting, including another led by the Justice Department. A report earlier this month by tactical experts at Texas State University said an Uvalde police officer had a chance to stop the shooter before he entered the school armed with an AR-15.
But as an example of the conflicting statements and disputed accounts since the shooting, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said it never happened.
That report was made at the request of the Texas Department of Public Safety, which McLaughlin has increasingly criticized and accused of trying to minimize the role of its troopers during the massacre.
Steve McCraw, the chief of the Texas DPS, called the police response a dismal failure.
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