Uvalde city officials release missing footage from officers responding to 2022 Robb Elementary shooting

By Lomi Kriel and Lexi Churchill, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica, and Zach Despart, Terri Langford and Pooja Salhotra, The Texas Tribune

Oct. 8, 2024

“Uvalde city officials release missing footage from officers responding to 2022 Robb Elementary shooting” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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^{Editor’s note: This story contains explicit language.}

City officials in Uvalde, Texas, released another trove of videos on Tuesday from officers responding to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting, footage that they had previously failed to divulge as part of a legal settlement with news organizations suing for access.

The new material included at least 10 police body camera videos and nearly 40 dashboard videos that largely affirm prior reporting by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and FRONTLINE detailing law enforcement’s failures to engage the teen shooter who killed 19 children and two teachers. Officers only confronted the gunman 77 minutes after he began firing, a delay that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said cost lives.

In one 30-minute video released Tuesday, officers lined up in the school hallway as they prepared to breach a classroom door about an hour after the shooter first entered the building. The footage, while not new, showed a slightly different angle from what had previously been released. In it, victims are completely blurred, but their cries and screams can be heard and blood is visible in the hallway. The video also shows officers performing chest compressions on a victim on the sidewalk.

In another video, an officer wearing a body camera is crying at points, telling someone on the phone: “They’re just kids. It’s fucked up.” He adds, “I just never thought shit like that would happen here.” Another officer asks if he should take his weapon from him and tells him to sit down and “relax.” That seven-minute video after the breach shows medics working on someone in an ambulance.

The news organizations previously reported in an investigation with The Washington Post that officers initially treated teacher Eva Mireles, who was shot in Room 112, on a sidewalk because they did not see any ambulances, although two were parked just past the corner of the building. Mireles, one of three victims who still had a pulse when she was rescued, died in an ambulance that never left the school.

Much of the other body camera footage shows officers waiting around after the breach or clearing classrooms that are empty, offering little revelatory detail. Officers are also seen outside the school responding to questions from bystanders.

Dashboard videos also offered few new details, showing police officers idling in patrol cars outside of Robb Elementary. Some officers paced the parking lot and communicated inaudibly through radios and cellphones. One video shows a television crew arriving at the scene, and others show ambulances and parents waiting as helicopters circle overhead.

In August, as part of the settlement, the city released hundreds of records and videos to media organizations, which similarly largely confirmed prior reporting. But days after releasing those records, city officials acknowledged that an officer with the Uvalde Police Department had informed the agency that some of his body camera footage was missing.

Police Chief Homer Delgado ordered an audit of the department’s servers, which revealed even more videos had not been turned over. He shared those with District Attorney Christina Mitchell, who is overseeing a criminal investigation into the botched response, and ordered his own internal probe into how the lapse occurred.

In an emailed statement late Tuesday, city officials said that the internal investigation uncovered not only “technological issues,” but an “unintentional lack of proper due diligence by the officer who served as custodian” of the police department’s records. City officials said that the officer, whom they did not name, faced disciplinary action and retired from the department. They said the investigation found “no evidence of any intentional effort to withhold information.” They added that the department is working to improve its internal record keeping procedures and technological hurdles so that “such an oversight does not occur again.”

The Uvalde Leader-News reported last month that former city police Sgt. Donald Page faced disciplinary action related to the withheld footage and subsequently resigned. Page’s attorney declined to answer most questions but wrote in an email to the Tribune and ProPublica that the veteran officer in fact retired. Page oversaw operations including dispatch and evidence technicians, according to his interview with investigators and the city’s report into the shooting, and was in plain clothes that day. It is unclear whether he was wearing his own body camera. It does not seem to be part of any released footage.

Former Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin on Tuesday praised the city police for releasing the material. He called on other law enforcement agencies to follow suit.

“It should have been done from day one,” said McLaughlin, who is currently running for the Texas House. “I was frustrated when I found out we had something we had overlooked, but everybody needs to release their stuff. … It’s the only way these families are going to get some closure.”

It is unclear whether the new footage would alter Mitchell’s investigation. She did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

A grand jury in June indicted former Uvalde school district police Chief Pete Arredondo and school resource officer Adrian Gonzales on felony child endangerment charges. Footage released in August and on Tuesday comes from city police officers, not school district officers, so it does not include any video from Arredondo or Gonzales. None of the school district officers were wearing body cameras that day because the department did not own any, Arredondo later told investigators. He also dropped his school-issued radio as he rushed into the school.

According to the school district’s active shooter plan, Arredondo was supposed to take charge. His indictment alleges in part that he failed to follow his training and gave directions that impeded the response, endangering children. Gonzales, who along with Arredondo was among the first officers on scene, “failed to otherwise act in a way to impede the shooter until after the shooter entered rooms 111 and 112,” according to his indictment.

Experts have said their cases face an uphill battle as no officers in recent history have been found guilty of inaction in mass shootings. Both men pleaded not guilty, and the next hearing is set for December. No Uvalde Police Department officers have been charged.

News organizations, including the Tribune and ProPublica, sued several local and state agencies more than two years ago for records related to the shooting. The city settled with the news organizations, agreeing to provide records requested under the state’s Public Information Act. But three other government agencies — the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office — continue fighting against any release of their records.

More than two years after the shooting, victims’ relatives have said that they still feel like there has been little accountability or transparency. They said that they feel betrayed and as if government agencies attempted a “cover-up.”

Across the country, the news organizations found, more states require active shooter training for teachers and students than they do for the officers expected to protect them. At least 37 states have laws mandating that schools conduct active shooter-related drills, most of them annually. Texas was the only state to require repeat training for officers as of this year, 16 hours every two years, in a mandate that only came about after the Uvalde massacre.

Experts said repeated training was necessary for these high-pressure responses, and a Justice Department review into the Uvalde response this year recommended at least eight hours of annual active shooter training for every officer in the country.

In all, nearly 400 officers from about two dozen agencies responded to the shooting. Yet despite at least seven investigations launched after the massacre, only about a dozen officers have been fired, suspended or retired.

One of those, Texas Ranger Christopher Ryan Kindell, was reinstated in August after fighting his termination.

On Tuesday evening, the new school that replaces Robb received a name: Legacy Elementary School. UCISD trustees approved the name after 11 months of consideration by a committee, according to a press release.

“Legacy Elementary is more than just a name; it is a symbol of our shared vision for a brighter, more inclusive future for all students,” Superintendent Ashley Chohlis said in the release.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/10/08/uvalde-school-shooting-videos-released-lawsuit/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

October 9th, 2024 | News