AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Surveillance footage captured the gunman in the Uvalde school shooting enter the building with a AR-15 style rifle and later shows officers in body armor milling in the hallway outside the fourth-grade classrooms where 19 children and two teachers were killed.
The video published Tuesday by the Austin American-Statesman shows parts of the nearly 80 minutes that passed between the gunman walking into Robb Elementary through an unlocked door and the time when his death put an stop to America’s deadliest school shooting in nearly two decades.
The four-minute video from May 24 shows two officers approach the classrooms not long after the gunman and then run back amid the sounds of gunfire. It shows officers, some with shields and rifles, massing in the hall before they breached the room and killed the gunman about an hour later.
Why the Austin American-Statesman chose to publish video from inside Robb Elementary
The edited footage was published as Texas lawmakers investigating the massacre are preparing to release their findings and show body-camera and surveillance footage to mourning families and other residents of Uvalde.
Officials said the 77 minutes of footage they are preparing to release this weekend does not contain images of children. The video footage has received renewed attention over the past week as anger mounts in Uvalde over an incomplete account about the slow police response and calls for accountability seven weeks after the worst school shooting in Texas history.
Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Republican leading an investigation into the shooting, said that the video and findings from a preliminary report will be shown Sunday in Uvalde to residents and distributed publicly soon after. Later in the day he tweeted, “while I am glad that a small portion is now available for the public, I do believe watching the entire segment of law enforcement’s response, or lack thereof, is also important.”
The footage published by the Statesman includes 911 tape of a teacher screaming, “Get down! Get in your rooms! Get in your rooms!”
As the gunman approaches the classrooms a child down the hallway can be seen poking their head around the corner and then running back while shots ring out. Later, about 20 minutes before police breach the room, the video shows a man wearing a vest that says “sheriff” use a hand sanitizer dispenser mounted on the wall.
Burrows said his committee has interviewed more than 40 people behind closed doors over the last several weeks, including law enforcement who were at the scene. He has defended the committee talking with witnesses in private to elicit more candor about what happened.
State police said last week that Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Busbee had objected to releasing the video. Busbee has not publicly addressed those claims and did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment left with her office Tuesday.
State and local officials have previously cited the prosecutor’s ongoing investigation as a reason they could not release information about the shooting, including body camera footage.
But the video alone will not answer all the questions that remain, nearly two months later, about the law enforcement response. Among them are how schools police Chief Pete Arredondo came to the forefront of the massive law enforcement response involving numerous local, state and federal agencies.
State authorities have cast Arredondo as the on-scene commander and said his errors delayed police killing the gunman. Arredondo, however, has told the Texas Tribune he didn’t consider himself to be in charge of operations and that he assumed someone else had taken control of the law enforcement response. He did not have a police radio at the time.
The roles of the ranking on-scene officers from other agencies, including the Texas Department of Public Safety, remain unclear. Local officials in Uvalde have accused the state police of repeatedly putting out inaccurate information about the shooting while glossing over the role of its own troopers.
Associated Press writer Jake Bleiberg in Dallas contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Well it seems clear that after all the Kids have been Killed or shot and the teacher too then the gun man was the only one in the room alive they shot Him wow so much for their Protection and the Police Period fire all of them
We were told at the time that the room was stormed by a Border Patrol unit. I don’t know if that is still valid or not since so we were told so much that turned out to be untrue. If it is true it makes sense that it took awhile for them to get there. They were not in Uvalde, they were 40 miles away and they had to defy the local cops orders to stand down when they got there.
https://news.yahoo.com/border-patrol-agents-defied-uvalde-145127057.html
I support police whenever I can but the Uvalde officers should be fired, run out of town and tried for dereliction of duty or something worse, in my opinion.
AT the least, they need to get FIRED.. The lot of them.
At the most, charged for CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE.
Supposedly these officers had recently gone through training for just such an incident. I see no organization, no tactics, and absolutely no trained response. These people are not even trained ion proper building entry response to armed assailants. I see a bunch of people with deer in the headlights syndrome and no leadership.
I know it’s easy for me to say because I wasn’t there. But it seems to me like trained police officers with high-powered weapons ought to know that if a gunman is inside a building killing people that their first and foremost job is to stop him by any and all means necessary before he does it to anyone else. Never mind waiting for some superior officer to tell you to go ahead and do it. Just get it done and worry about the chain of command later.
The ones in the picture look like big, manly men, but real MEN (M-E-N) protect the weak and helpless with their lives, if necessary. These clowns are posturing sissies.
They are scared! Why are we paying these cowards to protect us?! This is so horrific….they not only need to be fired, they need to be charged for not doing what they are sworn to do and have been PAID to do. I understand not wanting to face a gunman….that’s why I’m NOT a cop. These men took this job, swore an oath, hoping they would never have to prove it. The blood of those children is on their hands. This is beyond disturbing. I am sick!
You have it right. In the video, you hear gun shots and see the police RUNNING the other way. These cowards should all do jail time, or just turn them over to the parents of those dead children, and let them do anything they want to them.
Just like we saw at Stoneman douglass in Florida the other year…. COPS COWARDLY SITTING BY doing nothing.
Unfortunately , as has been ruled many times , the police have no duty to protect you as an individual . I do think it is an absolute shameful reaction , to children dying , that we see in this video.
THEN WHY DO WE need to keep paying taxes FOR COPS then? If they are not there to protect us, just ‘clean up afterwards’, WHY BOTHER keeping them around?!
The worst thing was seeing the cop who just had to get hand sanitizer on! Just unbelievable. Definitely fire them all and charge them with something!
Ituser, agree with your Stoneman Douglass comparison. I might add that this time the police were inside doing nothing while the Stoneman Douglass officer was outside and did nothing.
BUT from what i remember, HE SAW the shooter go in the building, and cowered behind his car, and did nothing….
Good job Uvaldie police. COWARDS!!