Texas school shooting: Investigation reveals complete disregard and unpreparedness on the part of the police

As part of the government agency's first comprehensive investigation into the mass shooting at Uvalde Elementary School, the Investigative Committee released a preliminary report on July 17 outlining a number of setbacks made by several law enforcement agencies in their operations at the scene. CNN.

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"Systemic failures and blatantly wrong decisions" by law enforcement and school authorities in Uvalde, Texas, resulted in an 18-year-old shooter managing to kill 19 students and two teachers, the case report says. NPR.

Hundreds of law enforcement officials put their safety ahead of the lives of students and teachers that day as they waited more than an hour to confront the shooter, according to a 77-page report from a Texas House of Representatives committee.

After weeks of conflicting and inconsistent reports of police response, this report gives the public the most complete picture of the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School. As the police, with no clear direction or organization, lingered, school staff became less vigilant, deviating from a closed-door policy and active shooting procedures.

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“There were a few systemic failures,” said Republican investigating committee member Dustin Burrows, summing up at a press conference on July 17, hours after the report was published.

He warned that these security failures are not just a problem that exists in Uvalde, adding that "some of the same systems we found here that went down that day are operating across the state and country."

Here are some of the key findings the committee found during its investigation.

Law enforcement agencies share “systemic responsibility”

A total of 376 law enforcement officers arrived at the scene in a chaotic and uncoordinated manner, according to the report. According to the committee, a group of federal, state and local officials lacked clear leadership, rudimentary communication and sufficient urgency to apprehend the shooter.

Previous official reports of the shooting placed primary blame on school district police chief Pete Arredondo, who is on administrative leave and has since retired from his position on the city council, and other local police officers were also found guilty.

Upon arriving at the school, Arredondo fiddled with his radio and ended up throwing it at the fence, the report says, arguing that one of the other sergeants was at the scene with the radio, he testified to the committee.

The Uvalde School District's active shooting policy required Arredondo to be the incident commander, who would have to be responsible for leaving the building to organize the proper response and inform other officers that he was in charge. Instead, Arredondo remained inside the building.

After Arredondo arrived at the school, he went to class 110, which had bullet holes but no children inside. He then "prayed" for the children in rooms 111 and 112, where the shooter fired over 100 shots, which he also claimed were empty.

A report on the Uvalde shooting describes numerous setbacks and a "sluggish approach" from law enforcement.
But there was no evidence that the officers "at the same time, upon arriving at the building, realized that teachers and students had just been shot dead in the classrooms."

It took over an hour before the officers finally broke into the classroom and killed the shooter.

According to the committee's report, first responders have "lost critical momentum", viewing the situation as a "barricaded subject" scenario that requires a more measured response than an active shooter.

"Fixing this bug should have caused great urgency to immediately infiltrate the classroom by any means possible, incapacitate the attacker, and provide immediate assistance" to the victims, the report said.

“Looking back, we now know it was a terrible, tragic mistake,” the committee wrote.

The officers said they knew the shooter was in one of the rooms, but didn't know what was going on behind closed doors because they didn't hear any screams, despite hearing several shots.

Dramatic body camera footage, first broadcast to CNN by Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, gives a close-up of law enforcement's response to the unfolding massacre.

The video was posted to CNN on July 17, the same day the interim report was released. It shows officers smashing windows and pulling children out of other classrooms in the school, as well as fiddling with keys in the hallway and unable to open the door next to where an armed criminal controlled two classrooms full of dead, dying and frightened children and a teacher .

The footage shows close-ups just behind Classes 111 and 112, as well as conversations between officers and requests to the shooter.
Daniel Coronado, Police Sergeant Uvalde, who was among the first on the scene at 11:35 a.m., and UPD officer Justin Mendoza provided footage from their body cameras.

According to the video, Coronado identifies the shooter as an "AR man" at 11:39 a.m., minutes after the shooter first entered the classrooms and shortly after he opened fire on the responding officers.

Initially, there is confusion as to whether the shooter was in the office, but at 11:42 a.m., a bell rings that this is the class of Eva Mireles, a teacher who called to inform her husband, police officer Uvalde Ruben Ruiz, that she had a shooting.

Body camera from Mendoza around 12:11. shows how officers learn that BORTAC - the Border Patrol Rapid Response Team - is still 30 minutes away. Around the same time, Coronado's body camera captures someone urging the shooter in both English and Spanish to surrender.

In Mendoza's video, a dispatcher can be heard saying that a child on the line from "Room 12" is talking about a "room full of victims," ​​which was relayed to Acting Police Chief Uvalde at the scene, Lieutenant Mariano Pargas, without intelligible comment.

On July 17, Uvalde city officials announced that Pargas had been placed on administrative leave to further investigate his role in the law enforcement response.

Arredondo testified that his assessment of the situation was to prevent the shooter from moving to other classes.
“I figured the shooter had barricaded himself in the room,” he said. “Our thought was, 'If he gets out, we'll eliminate the threat,' right? Let's get these kids out."

If they had recognized the situation as an active shooting scenario, they should have prioritized "rescuing innocent victims over precious time wasted looking for keys and shields to improve the safety of law enforcement officers," according to the report.

"Lack of effective incident management"

The report shows that most of the officers who responded to the incident were from state and federal forces, 149 from the US Border Patrol and 91 from the state police department.

There were 25 city police officers and 16 county sheriff officers. The Arredondo School Police consisted of five officers.

The committee also blames those officers, "many of whom were better trained and better equipped than the school district police," who it said were supposed to fill a leadership void when they saw the chaos unfold.

“They should have started asking questions and offering their support and guidance, and maybe eventually they would have been empowered,” Rep. Burroughs said.

“This did not happen at Robb Elementary School, and the lack of effective incident management is a major factor in other vital measures not being taken,” the report says.

Two members of the Uvalde Police Department arrived at rooms 111 and 112 a minute after the attacker had opened fire. The attacker fired at the officers, who were hit by bullet fragments and retreated. They did not return fire. One of them left the building, according to the report.

Although law enforcement made several mistakes, it is not clear if the quicker response of the officers who arrived on the scene could have prevented some of the deaths.

Relaxed school security and security violations

Although Robb Elementary School had safety measures in place and procedures in place to respond to shootings, school staff developed a culture of complacency about such measures. For reasons of convenience, some teachers frequently left the doors unlocked, which is against school policy. Due to a shortage of keys, substitute teachers were often told not to lock the locks.

The school also had an intruder alert system installed. But no one paid any attention to her for a long time.
The report states that on the day of the attack, the shooter climbed over a 1,5m-high outer fence before several unlocked doors allowed the shooter to enter the classrooms unhindered.

“But if school staff locked the doors, as required by school policy, it could slow their progress for a few precious minutes — long enough to get a warning, hide the kids, and lock the doors; and long enough to give the police more room to intervene and stop the attacker,” the report said.

Instead, the shooter likely killed most of the victims before any rescuers entered the building. The committee found: "Of the approximately 142 shots that the attacker fired inside the building, it is certain that he quickly fired over 100 of those shots before any officer entered."

The attacker opened fire on the premises of his former 4th class.

At 11:33 a.m., the attacker fired more than 100 shots at rooms 111 and 112 within two and a half minutes.

According to the report, room 111 was the same classroom the shooter was in in fourth grade. Just weeks before the attack, the shooter told an acquaintance about his bad memories of fourth grade.

His former fourth grade teacher, who was in the building at the time of the shooting, told the committee that she said he was bullied in fourth grade. She consulted with the mother of the shooter and said that eventually he began to make friends.

The attacker's family testified that he continued to be teased because of his clothing and speech impediments. By 2018, when the shooter was in ninth grade, he had accumulated over 100 absenteeism and failing grades. In 2021, when the attacker was 17 years old, Uwalde High School expelled him.

“It is not clear if the school staff ever visited the home of the attacker,” the report said.

According to the report, when the shooter returned to Robb's elementary school on the day of the attack, he was able to enter room 111 as the door was not properly locked. The lock in room 111 was known to be defective, and teachers and students often went there to use the printer.

The teacher of this class, who was injured during the shooting, testified that the school police often made remarks about the door to him, and notified the school administration, who said that a request had been made.

The head watchman at the school testified that he never knew of any problems with the door and would have applied for the job if he had known. The director said the administration had been warned of the door in March.

On the day of the shooting, the class 111 teacher said he did not remember being informed of an active shooter in the building or if he made any extra effort to lock the door.

The attacker spread his intentions on social networks

The shooter sent a message about the weapon to some of his social media contacts, the report said, and promised to "do something" that they would hear about on the news.

The report indicates that some users may have reported this, but "do not appear to have done anything in response."

According to the report, three minutes after the militant fired at rooms 111 and 112, the Uvalde Police Department on duty received a call that the woman had been shot in the head. It was the shooter's grandmother.

According to the report, before leaving for Robb's elementary school, the shooter and his grandmother got into an argument over his phone, which resulted in her calling AT&T to get him off the call plan.

At the time of the incident, he contacted a female acquaintance in Germany for an hour and hung up after informing her of his plans to harm his grandmother, according to the report.

He shot his grandmother in the face before stealing her truck despite not having a driver's license. He went to Robb Elementary School.

She survived the attack and was released from the hospital on June 29.

The attacker started shopping for firearm accessories in February, and when he turned 18 in May, he spent nearly $5000 on two assault rifles and hollow point bullets.

You may be interested in: top New York news, stories of our immigrants and helpful tips about life in the Big Apple - read it all on ForumDaily New York.

The attacker's uncle took him twice to a gun shop to pick up rifles, and after his grandmother told him he couldn't keep guns in her house, the uncle allowed him to keep one gun at his house.

The shooter told a friend that he hid the second rifle near his grandmother's house and brought it inside the night before the shooting.

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