UVALDE — The first in-depth report on the Uvalde school shooting, released to the public and victims’ families Sunday, determined that top-to-bottom failures combined to turn the May 24 attack into the worst school shooting in Texas history.
“Systemic failures and egregious poor decision making” included school officials who failed to follow established safety plans and responding law officers who failed to follow their training for active-shooter situations and delayed confronting the gunman for more than an hour, the 77-page report by a specially created Texas House committee concluded.
“They failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety,” the report said of law officers.
After a closed-door meeting with family members of the victims where they viewed an edited video of the police response to the shooting, the committee met publicly and laid out the details of the report.
During an hourlong question-and-answer session with reporters, members declined to address policy questions such as whether lawmakers should restrict access to assault-style weapons and who, if anyone, should be held accountable for what the committee found was a catastrophic and systematic breakdown.
State Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock and chairman of the special committee, also said that no community should assume it is safe or immune from the violence and death that visited Uvalde on May 24.
“I think some of the same systems that we found here that failed that day are (in place) across the entire state and country,” Burrows said. “I do not want to say because of one thing or one person (at Robb Elementary), it could not happen elsewhere. I think that’s a disservice and not the respectful thing to do.”
Members of the panel, Burrow said, “have strong opinions about changes to policy that needs to be done.”
“Today is not the day we’re going to share our our strong feelings and convictions about that,” he said.
The lack of specificity about what steps are needed to better defend Texans from mass gun violence left many of the people inside the Uvalde civic center frustrated. Several shouted insults, including “cowards,” and asked “what about guns?” as the committee members filed out.
“You are a bunch of cowards,” shouted Ruben Mata, who said his great-granddaughters was among the children who were killed. “We already knew what was in the report,” he told reporters a short time later.”
Vicente Salazar, whose granddaughter Layla was among the 21 killed in the attack, made no effort to mask his anger after picking up a copy of the report just after noon at the Uvalde community center.
“It’s a solid cover-up. It’s a joke,” he said. “Texas failed the students. Law enforcement failed the students.”
The report by the three-member House Investigative Committee on the Robb Elementary Shooting compiled details gleaned from interviews with 33 witnesses, all conducted in private during eight hearings in Uvalde and at the Capitol, and 39 other informal interviews. Its release was a milestone in efforts to understand events that grew muddled as the official version of the shooting — relayed by political leaders and law enforcement — shifted radically in the chaotic days after the attack that left 19 fourth-graders and two teachers dead.
The committee report focused primarily on actions taken by school employees before the shooting and law enforcement during the attack, finding significant deficiencies in both.
The committee also released an edited version of the hallway video footage previously published by the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV. The committee’s video did not include sound or images of the gunman walking into the school and firing his military-style assault rifle. Neither video showed children, teachers or the gunman being shot.
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district includes Uvalde, said the report confirms many of the shortcomings and procedural breakdowns he’s been pointing out since the…
Read More: Uvalde shooting report released by Texas House investigative committee