Faculty officers in Uvalde, Texas, on Monday launched textual content messages, personnel information, scholar information of the shooter and police physique digital camera video from the 2022 attack at Robb Elementary School, following a yearslong authorized battle over public entry to the fabric.
The information embody emails between high faculty district officers and in addition textual content messages and emails to and from not less than two faculty cops who have been on the scene. The discharge additionally incorporates the personnel file of former Uvalde colleges police chief Pete Arredondo, who has been described because the on-scene commander of the regulation enforcement response.
The discharge included a handful of textual content exchanges between Arredondo and others on the district that have been despatched earlier than the taking pictures. At 9:04 a.m., the chief instructed officer Adrian Gonzales to “go hang around on the park with the seniors till 11:30.” At 11:40 a.m. a textual content to Arredondo from a district secretary famous somebody reported listening to photographs outdoors Robb Elementary.
“They went forward and locked themselves down,” the textual content to Arredondo learn. At 1:07 p.m., a textual content to Arredondo requested if any college students have been injured or taken to the hospital and requested if the district can carry the “safe standing” on the varsity. The shooter had been killed by regulation enforcement about quarter-hour earlier.
A number of bodycam movies present officers from a number of departments inside the varsity hallway and standing outdoors. Officers milling about counsel throwing fuel within the window or trying to find a key to the locked classroom, but it surely’s unclear any of these solutions are taken or who’s in cost.
Inside minutes, mother and father making their approach to a fence close to the varsity and yell at officers them to do one thing.
“Whose class is he in?” one mum or dad might be heard yelling. One other yells: “Come on man, my daughter is in there.” One other mum or dad not seen on the video angrily says, “Both you go in or I am stepping into bro,” including a couple of seconds later, “My youngsters are in there, bro … please.”
In a single video, an officer concerned within the preliminary response might be heard saying, “We will not see him in any respect” earlier than including, “We have been on the entrance and he began taking pictures.”
The officer sporting the physique cam asks: “He is in a classroom, proper?” One other officer responds: “With youngsters.”
Media organizations, together with CBS News and The Related Press, sued the district and county in 2022 for the discharge of their information associated to the mass taking pictures that killed 19 students and two teachers.
A Texas appeals courtroom in July upheld a decrease courtroom’s ruling that the information should be launched.
Eric Homosexual / AP
The information are usually not the general public’s first glimpse inside one of many nation’s deadliest mass shootings and a sluggish regulation enforcement response that has been broadly condemned. Final yr, metropolis officers in Uvalde launched police physique digital camera movies and recordings of 911 calls.
Practically 400 officers waited greater than 70 minutes earlier than confronting the gunman in a classroom full of useless and wounded kids and lecturers. A number of federal and state investigations into the response have laid naked cascading issues in regulation enforcement coaching, communication, management and expertise, and questioned whether or not officers prioritized their very own lives over these of kids and lecturers.
Two faculty district officers face legal prices for his or her actions that day. The previous colleges police chief, Arredondo, and former officer Adrian Gonzales each face a number of counts of kid endangerment and abandonment. Each males have pleaded not responsible and are scheduled for trial later this yr.
They’re the one two responding officers to have been charged.
Laura Prather, media regulation chair for Haynes Boone, which represented the media organizations within the go well with, mentioned in an announcement Monday night time: “Greater than three years after the Robb Elementary Faculty taking pictures, the discharge of long-withheld public information by the Uvalde Consolidated Unbiased Faculty District is a crucial step towards giving the group the solutions they deserve. The courtroom’s ruling makes clear that authorities companies can not cover behind imprecise authorized claims to withhold public data.”
“Three years is already too lengthy to attend for fact and transparency that would forestall future tragedies,” Prather added.
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