Uvalde shooting

Don McLaughlin is "tired of the bullshit stories," he said, after new footage shows officers rescuing children.

According to investigators, many officers were unsure who exactly was in charge —Arredondo himself, who is now on administrative leave, said he didn't know he was the incident commander. "Why don't you see Colonel McCraw and ask him," McLaughlin said. "We have further questions as to who was responsible for taking command as each agency there had senior level commanders on site... "Why don't you go see the Chief of Staff for the Governor and ask him, face to face? And then ask Colonel McCraw and the other DPS officer what the meeting was about. "We're tired of the bull**** leaks, we're tired of the bull**** stories, and we're tired that you say no law enforcement officer cooperated," McLaughlin continued, calling any such claim "a lie."

A damning report and hours of body camera footage laid bare the chaotic response to a mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school.

The report concluded that some officers waited because they relied on bad information while others “had enough information to know better.” According to the report, 376 law enforcement officers massed at the school. No single officer has received as much scrutiny since the shooting as Arredondo, who also resigned from his newly appointed seat on the City Council after the shooting. Investigators said it was not their job to determine whether officers should be held accountable, saying that decisions rested with each law enforcement agency. It included video of several officers reacting to word from a dispatcher, roughly 30 minutes after the shooting began, that a child in the room had called 911. “There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives. They need to come back and give us their undivided attention,” she said later. Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said an investigation would be launched to determine whether Pargas should have taken command of the scene. Still, no one tried to breach the classroom. We’ve got to get in there, he just keeps shooting. “It’s a joke. “I’m pissed.

NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Texas State Representative Joe Moody about the report he helped write on the Uvalde elementary school shooting, ...

It faults Arredondo with multiple missteps, including abandoning his radio outside and proceeding to handle the situation as one of a "barricaded subject" rather than an active shooter. And he suggested that wasn't the only missed opportunity to contact authorities. And he adds that the systems around him failed, too. "If we want to make them more stringent and have that conversation in this situation — I think the attacker doesn't end up with those guns. But he says the story of the Uvalde shooter shows that these laws really do matter. The report didn't place the blame squarely on any one individual, but pointed to a variety of shortcomings on the part of entities including the school, social media platforms and the attacker's family.

Texas lawmakers digging into the Uvalde disaster seem astounded 21 people were killed after so many cops -- nearly 400 -- responded to the shooting scene, ...

According to the report, no one assumed command once arriving on the scene, despite there being hundreds of officers from all over the area. The 80-page investigative report, released by a committee from the Texas House of Representatives Sunday, reveals a total of 376 officers responded in May to the tragedy at Robb Elementary School, yet it's “almost certain” at least 100 shots were fired inside before they entered. Uvalde Mass Shooting 376 Cops Responded to the School ... Lawmakers Highlight 'Poor Decisions'

Beverly King, a survivor of the October 2017 shooting, traveled to Uvalde to give 1000...

They also have gifted bears to people affected other mass shootings throughout the country. King discovered the California-based company four years ago while in intense trauma therapy as a result of the Oct. 1 shooting. Having someone care that they have never met will be a long-lasting memory and give them the chance to hold onto something positive during a tragic event.” “Being able to see the looks on not only the kids, but the adults as well … when we would hand them a cub, they would smile,” Crane said. Officials say at least two other people died later of their gunshot wounds. She received not only monetary support, but the backing of people who offered whatever they could to help.

Family members of Texas school shooting victims say state legislature's 77-page report 'doesn't change anything'

“The people have a right to ask questions.” “This is systemic to Texas.” But because the committee prioritized questions from the media, none of the community members at the meeting were able to ask their questions. “It’s not good enough for me. The one for Alithia Ramirez, 10, has a kangaroo and pink plastic flowers. The pile for Annabelle Rodriguez, 10, has a pale straw cowboy hat and a plush lamb. After weeks of 100F heat, the dozens of prayer candles have melted. “It’s a joke. All morning on Sunday, relatives trickled in to the small south Texas city to pick up their copy. Officers from multiple agencies failed to confront the gunman for 73 minutes. There will be more reports after the deadliest school shooting in the state’s history. The report doesn’t change anything.”

A damning report and hours of body camera footage laid bare the chaotic response to a mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school.

The report concluded that some officers waited because they relied on bad information while others “had enough information to know better.” No single officer has received as much scrutiny since the shooting as Arredondo, who also resigned from his newly appointed seat on the City Council after the shooting. Investigators said it was not their job to determine whether officers should be held accountable, saying that decisions rested with each law enforcement agency. According to the report, 376 law enforcement officers massed at the school. It included video of several officers reacting to word from a dispatcher, roughly 30 minutes after the shooting began, that a child in the room had called 911. “There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives. They need to come back and give us their undivided attention,” she said later. Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said an investigation would be launched to determine whether Pargas should have taken command of the scene. That included nearly 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 91 state police officials. Still, no one tried to breach the classroom. We’ve got to get in there, he just keeps shooting. “It’s a joke.

Texas State Rep. Joe Moody, who helped write the report on the shooting, says he hopes the investigation helps lawmakers improve policy going forward ...

If we want to - you know, if we want to make them more stringent and have that conversation, in this situation, I think this - I think the attacker doesn't end up with those guns. So it was a - you know, it was a failure of the systems that should have been in place to be able to produce a better result in that scenario. I think it's hard because I have a complete picture of what I know, you know, happened in that classroom. You know, there are some officers that were told that the chief of police of the ICD was actually in the room, negotiating with the attacker. And when you see that reaction, it - you know, there's something you want to have happened that's different. But I know that it doesn't. And it's something that I probably will never be able to understand fully or maybe even process fully." It faults Arredondo with multiple missteps, including abandoning his radio outside and proceeding to handle the situation as one of a "barricaded subject" rather than an active shooter. "If we want to make them more stringent and have that conversation in this situation — I think the attacker doesn't end up with those guns. And he suggested that wasn't the only missed opportunity to contact authorities. And he adds that the systems around him failed, too. The report didn't place the blame squarely on any one individual, but pointed to a variety of shortcomings on the part of entities including the school, social media platforms and the attacker's family. But he says the story of the Uvalde shooter shows that these laws really do matter.

Family of shooting victims listen to the Texas House investigative committee release its full report on the shootings at Robb Elementary School, Sunday, July 17 ...

The lock on room 111 was known to be faulty, and teachers and students would often enter to use the printer. The teacher never submitted a work order himself, "as was the apparent practice among Robb Elementary teachers," the report said. It was the gunman's grandmother. But the frequency of "bailout" alerts, which flag the presence of fleeing human traffickers in the area, desensitized teachers to their urgency. Just weeks before the attack, the shooter had spoken with an acquaintance about bad memories of fourth grade. She consulted with the gunman's mother, and said he eventually began making friends. In 2021, when the attacker was 17, Uvalde High School withdrew him. In all, 376 law enforcement officers arrived at a scene that was chaotic and uncoordinated, the report says. The attacker shot at the officers, who were grazed by bullet fragments and retreated. The school was also set up with an intruder alert system. Two officers with the Uvalde Police Department arrived at rooms 111 and 112 minutes after the attacker opened fire. After Arredondo entered the school, he went to classroom 110, which had bullet holes, but no children were inside.

Texas State Rep. Joe Moody, who helped write the report on the shooting, says he hopes the investigation helps lawmakers improve policy going forward ...

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The report details the botched police response to the elementary school shooting in May. The analysis found nearly 400 officers converged on the scene but ...

And it was likely that most of the victims died immediately during the shooter's initial gunfire - little solace to family members, who are still angry and just want answers. KATZ: Yes. It was a more personal view of the response than what was also made public in 77 minutes of hallway surveillance. The gunman had a high-powered weapon. But it reiterates that many of the officers were unsure of who was in charge. And we also learned that the gunman specifically targeted this particular classroom. He struggled to fit in and eventually became isolated. He struggled in school, both academically and socially. KATZ: Yeah. One thing is the - in this report is that Robb Elementary School was unprepared to deal with this shooting. KATZ: Well, in many ways it doesn't. But the first thing is this slow response was a failure of law enforcement at all levels. He was the acting city police chief during the shooting. And right after the release of this report, Uvalde's Mayor Don McLaughlin put Mariano Pargas on leave. Texas lawmakers ordered an investigation of the mass shooting in Uvalde. They found a series of failures and poor decision making.

Uvalde residents who lost loved ones at Robb Elementary say they want to know if officers will face repercussions.

Texas leaders have agreed to dedicate more than $100 million in state funds to boost school safety and mental health services following the Uvalde massacre. Orta, the mother of 10-year-old victim Rojelio Torres, said she doesn’t know if she can send her other three kids back to school until she knows if the school district plans to upgrade security, such as changing the locks or getting new fencing. And examples of officials and reports contradicting each other about what happened had already started piling up before the Sunday release of the House committee’s work. Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee will decide if any criminal charges should be filed against any police officers after the Texas Rangers complete their investigation. For weeks, state leaders have largely blamed Uvalde schools police Chief Pete Arredondo for law enforcement waiting more than an hour to confront the gunman. Once law enforcement made it to the school, it took more than an hour to confront the gunman, something that has been heavily criticized by residents, officials and experts. “I was on the site at the school when all this stuff was going down. The report also detailed how school safety protocols fell short. “We have strong opinions about changes to policy that need to be done. According to the House committee’s report, most of the victims died quickly, torn apart by bullets designed for battlefields as the gunman fired about 100 rounds before police arrived. Some say they want officers who delayed the confrontation to be criminally charged. Some faulted state officials for not saying more about how they plan to prevent another mass shooting.

Nikki and Brett Cross are still in disbelief after 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia was among the 19 children and two adults who were killed in the May 24 massacre ...

The school system failed us. Brett Cross said watching the footage was the "worst thing" he has seen in his entire life. "The police failed us.

The 77-page report released Sunday by a special Texas House investigative committee presented stunning new details about the “chaos” and “confusion” during ...

His uncle claimed not to know what was inside, and said the visit did not cause any red flags, even as Ramos had told his cousin that he “did not want to live anymore.” Ramos hid the second rifle outside his grandmother’s home and brought it inside the night before the shooting, according to text messages obtained from Ramos’s phone. Arredondo and the officers did not reassess their approach, even as they began to receive reports of 911 calls from at least one injured student and word from the husband of teacher Eva Mireles, who is a school district police officer, that his wife had told him she was shot. Arredondo, who was on the south side, told investigators that he saw empty classrooms near Rooms 111 and 112, where Ramos was holed up, which gave him hope the classrooms occupied by the gunman might be empty, too. That turned out to be a lifesaving decision. “Of the approximately 142 rounds the attacker fired inside the building, it is almost certain that he rapidly fired over 100 of those rounds before any officer entered.” Reyes had previously complained that the door to his classroom, Room 111, did not lock properly, and said he had almost no time to react before the gunman opened fire on him and his students, 11 of whom died. The school had been placed on lockdown at least 50 times since February, leading to a diminished sense of urgency among staff. “She expected to then hear an announcement of a lockdown, but she did not hear one right away,” the report says. One of the first officers on the scene was Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the school district police chief, who wrote the school’s active-shooter response plan and assigned himself as incident commander in such a scenario. Investigators assailed the “void of leadership” among the nearly 400 local, state and federal law enforcement officers at the scene. In all, 376 law enforcement officers across 23 local, state and federal agencies gathered at the scene — a greater number than previously known.

However nearly 400 officers waited 73 minutes before breaching the classroom as newly released footage shows chaotic scene.

Police,” one officer shouts into the broken window. Burrows also criticized the lack of a clear chain of command at the scene. “It’s OK baby, it’s OK,” Coronado tells the children as they exit and flee. Among the missteps identified: the school district’s police chief, Pete Arrendondo, did not follow his own shooting incident plan that called for him to set up a command center outside where the incident was taking place. Several of them repeatedly question the ongoing delay. We gotta get in there.”

The department's officers made up nearly one-fourth of the 376 law enforcement members who responded to Texas' deadliest school shooting.

At a Texas Senate committee hearing last month, he called the law enforcement response an “abject failure” and said police could have stopped the shooter three minutes after arriving if it weren’t for the indecisiveness of Arredondo, who he said “decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.” Eva Guzman, the former Texas Supreme Court justice, said officers who failed to take action should not be working in law enforcement. The report said 376 law enforcement officers from several local, state and federal agencies lacked clear leadership, basic communications and sufficient urgency to take down the gunman.

Why did it take close to 400 officers so long to confront one gunman? RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Texas lawmakers ordered an investigation of the mass shooting in ...

And it was likely that most of the victims died immediately during the shooter's initial gunfire - little solace to family members, who are still angry and just want answers. KATZ: Yes. It was a more personal view of the response than what was also made public in 77 minutes of hallway surveillance. The gunman had a high-powered weapon. But it reiterates that many of the officers were unsure of who was in charge. And we also learned that the gunman specifically targeted this particular classroom. He struggled to fit in and eventually became isolated. He struggled in school, both academically and socially. KATZ: Yeah. One thing is the - in this report is that Robb Elementary School was unprepared to deal with this shooting. KATZ: Well, in many ways it doesn't. But the first thing is this slow response was a failure of law enforcement at all levels. He was the acting city police chief during the shooting. And right after the release of this report, Uvalde's Mayor Don McLaughlin put Mariano Pargas on leave. Texas lawmakers ordered an investigation of the mass shooting in Uvalde. They found a series of failures and poor decision making.

The review comes after a damning new 80-page report released over the weekend by the Texas House revealed wide failures by all levels of law enforcement.

The report concluded that some officers waited because they relied on bad information while others “had enough information to know better.” No single officer has received as much scrutiny since the shooting as Arredondo, who also resigned from his newly appointed seat on the City Council after the shooting. According to the report, 376 law enforcement officers massed at the school. Investigators said it was not their job to determine whether officers should be held accountable, saying that decisions rested with each law enforcement agency. It included video of several officers reacting to word from a dispatcher, roughly 30 minutes after the shooting began, that a child in the room had called 911. Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said an investigation would be launched to determine whether Pargas should have taken command of the scene. “There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives. They need to come back and give us their undivided attention,” she said later. Still, no one tried to breach the classroom. We’ve got to get in there, he just keeps shooting. It said the review was launched last week. The findings put more than 90 state troopers at Robb Elementary School during the May 24 tragedy.

We now know more about the costly sequence of errors that allowed a shooter to kill 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, ...

But a 2021 study from Hamline University and Metropolitan State University found that the rate of deaths in 133 mass school shootings between 1980 and 2019 was 2.83 times greater in cases where there was an armed guard present. But any law enforcement officer can take command, no matter their rank, and they are required to do so as part of their training, according to the report. In both the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, teachers had to leave the classroom to lock their doors while the shooters were active. There were three exterior doors in the west building where the shooting took place, and all three had been left unlocked, according to the report. But law enforcement didn’t act quickly enough in Uvalde and that’s partly because of a tragic, bureaucratic error: No officer stepped forward to assume command. They still didn’t breach the classroom and neutralize the shooter for more than an hour. Another potential preventative solution is red flag laws, or extreme risk laws, that temporarily prevent people who have been found by a court to pose a risk to themselves or others from obtaining a gun. They also have fewer expulsions and suspensions, events that have proven to incite some school shooters. He didn’t have much of a disciplinary history but was suspended on one occasion for “mutual combat” with another student in late 2018. But the report paints a clear picture of someone with a troubled childhood who was widely suspected of having violent ambitions in the months leading up to the attack. And it provides evidence for some of the policy solutions often backed by experts — including early intervention programs and certain security measures to block shooters’ access to schools and classrooms — and evidence for what doesn’t work, including “good guys with guns.” The shooter consistently had poor performance in school, suffered from a speech impediment for which he never received any special education services, and was bullied starting as early as the fourth grade.