“They failed to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety,” a new report on the school shooting reads.
The most comprehensive report yet on the Uvalde shooting outlined the “systemic failures” that led to the baffling inaction displayed by the hundreds of law enforcement officials present at Robb Elementary School as 21 people were gunned down inside. The report was conducted by a committee of lawmakers, who interviewed dozens of officers and witnesses. Victims’ families received copies of the 77-page document before it was publicly released, and have reacted with frustration and anger.
“It’s a joke. Texas failed the students. Law enforcement failed the students. Our government failed the students,” Vincent Salazar, whose 11-year-old granddaughter Layla Salazar was killed, told ABC.
Here are the major takeaways.
Failures in Uvalde
In total, a staggering 376 officers responded, which as the Texas Tribune notes in its reporting is a “force larger than the garrison that defended the Alamo.” Most belonged to federal and state law enforcement agencies, with just five school police officers at the scene.
Much of the criticism surrounding the response, which the report characterized as “lackadaisical,” has fallen on the Uvalde school police and its chief Pete Arredondo. The investigation determined Arredondo’s “search for a key” to the classrooms — which might not even have been locked — “consumed his attention and wasted precious time.” But the committee found that it wasn’t just Arredondo and his lack of leadership at fault. Other officers should have stepped in to assume control of the crisis, which would have led to a faster confrontation with the shooter.
“Other than the attacker, the Committee did not find any ‘villains’ in the course of its investigation,” the report reads. “There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives. Instead, we found systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making.”
After the report was released Uvalde’s acting police chief Lt. Mariano Pargas was placed on administrative leave. An investigation will be launched to determine if Pargas should have taken command of the scene, the AP reports.
Could more lives have been saved?
The gunman fired about 100 rounds in the minutes before police arrived at the school. Many of the victims died quickly due to their devastating bullet wounds, but some survived long enough to be taken to the hospital.
“It’s plausible,” the report reads, that some of the students and teachers killed “could have survived if they had not had to wait 73 additional minutes for rescue.”
A “breakdown in communication” meant that crucial information, like the fact that students and teachers had survived the initial gunfire and called out for help, wasn’t relayed to officers inside.
The report adds that “Robb Elementary had a culture of noncompliance with safety policies requiring doors to be kept locked, which turned out to be fatal.” Poor WiFi “likely delayed the lockdown alert” on the day of the attack, meaning that teachers didn’t receive “timely notice of the lockdown.” The school intercom wasn’t used to communicate the news. According to the report, the school also had “recurring problems” with doors and locks, including room 111’s locking mechanism, which was “widely known to be faulty, yet it was not repaired.”
New bodycam footage captures the chaos
Body camera footage shared with CNN by Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin on the day the report was released reveals a close-up perspective of the response that day. Per CNN, officers are shown breaking windows to remove kids from other classrooms, while fumbling at the door of the two classrooms where a gunman maintained control. Uvalde Police Sgt. Daniel Coronado, identified the shooter as a “male subject with an AR” minutes after the gunman shot at first responders at 11:39 a.m. At 11:42 a.m., the officers receive a call confirming that the room the gunman is in is a classroom, not an office, as Eva Mireles, a teacher, called her husband to tell him she’d been shot.
Video shows Lt. Mariano Pargas, the Uvalde PD chief on the scene, being told that a child on the line to a dispatcher has described a “room full of victims” in “Room 12,” to which Pargas makes no audible response. On Sunday, Uvalde announced that Pargas had been placed on administrative leave.
New details about the gunman emerge
The report found that there were warning signs that 18-year-old Salvador Ramos may have been planning an attack. He had earned the nickname “school shooter” on social media, because of violent threats he would make against others on the platforms. Ramos was described in the report as a social outcast who decided that he could win “notoriety and fame” by committing savagery like what unfolded in Uvalde.
He had dropped out of high school and was fired from two fast food jobs, the investigation found, and in the months before the attack was determined to obtain firearms. When he turned 18, about a week before the massacre, he bought two assault rifles online.
