The 77-page “interim report,” first made available to the families of the victims, described “a detached general approach” by nearly 400 responding officers, some of whom were from federal agencies. .
Camera footage of the first responders provided to CNN also gives a more detailed view of how law enforcement navigated during the agonizing 77 minutes at Robb Elementary, which ended as the second deadliest shooting ever. at a U.S. K-12 school.
The report comes after law enforcement pointed the finger after the shooting, as well as local officials denouncing the lack of transparency and for the families of the victims to slowly learn what could have been done. more to save their loved ones.
Law enforcement shares “systemic responsibility”
The report found that “the entire law enforcement and its training, preparation and response share the systemic responsibility for many missed opportunities.”
According to the report, the police who made the entrance knew there had been gunfire, evidenced by a “cloud of rubble” in the hallway, bullet holes in the walls and worn rifle carcass on the ground.
But there was no evidence that officers had “any contemporary understanding, when they arrived at the building, that teachers and students had just then been shot inside the classrooms.”
It would be over an hour before officers finally entered the classroom, killing the shooter.
According to the committee’s report, the first officials “lost critical momentum” in treating the situation as a “barricaded subject” scenario, which calls for a more measured response compared to an active shooter.
“The correction of this error should have caused a greater urgency to immediately violate the classroom by any possible means, subdue the attacker and deliver immediate assistance to the victims,” the report says.
If they had recognized the situation as an active shooter scenario, they should have prioritized the “rescue of innocent victims over the precious time lost in searching for door keys and shields to improve the safety of security guards,” he says. ‘report.
Of the 376 who took part in the scene, 149 were from the United States Border Patrol, 14 from the Department of Homeland Security and 91 from the Texas Department of Public Safety. The report did not indicate when officers from each responding agency arrived at the scene.
CNN has contacted the Texas DPS, the U.S. Border Patrol, the Uvalde School District, the city’s police department, and the Uvalde District Attorney for comment, among others.
“Lack of effective incident control”
At a hearing before a Texas Senate committee last month, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Colonel Steven McCraw, described the authorities’ response as “abject fault” and blamed the commander’s feet on the ‘scene, which state authorities have identified as a school. the head of the district police Pedro “Pete” Arredondo.
But Arredondo, who was placed on administrative leave by the school district, was not considered the commander of the incident, the report says, echoing comments he made to the Texas Tribune last month.
“My approach and my thinking was to respond as a police officer. And so I didn’t headline,” Arredondo said in the investigation report.
The report also noted that others may have taken command.
Advanced rapid response law enforcement training “teaches that any law enforcement officer can take command, that someone must take command, and that an incident commander can transfer responsibility as an incident develops, ”he says.
“This did not happen at Robb Elementary, and the lack of an effective incident command is an important factor that kept other vital measures from being taken,” the report said.
Communication failure
The report attributed some of the errors in response to an interruption in communication, in which information known to some outside the school may not have been relayed to those inside.
“In particular, no one made sure that those who made key decisions inside the building received information that students and teachers had survived the initial burst of gunfire, were trapped in classrooms, and had called for help,” he says. the report.
Arredondo previously told the Texas Tribune that he left his two radios out of school because he wanted to have his hands free to hold his gun.
Robb Elementary had its own problems, according to the investigation report, which found that a deficient WiFi “probably delayed the blocking alert” on the day of the shooting. Not all teachers received the report immediately and the school intercom was not used to communicate during confinement.
“As a result, not all teachers received a timely warning of the blockade,” the report says.
In addition, the school had what the report calls “recurring problems” with doors and locks, including the locking mechanism of Room 111, which “was widely known to be defective, but was not repaired.”
“Robb Elementary had a culture of non-compliance with security policies that required doors to be kept locked, which proved fatal,” the report says.
The new video captures the confusion and chaos
The spectacular images from the body camera first given to CNN by Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin offer a close-up view of law enforcement’s response to the ongoing massacre.
The video aired on CNN on Sunday, the same day the interim report was released. He reveals that officers smash windows and take children out of other classrooms in the school, as well as inside a hallway looking for keys and without opening a door near where a gunman controlled two classrooms full of dead, dying and terrified children. . teachers.
The footage shows close-ups from the outskirts of classrooms 111 and 112 and reveals conversations between agents and pleas to the shooter.
CNN watched hours of body camera footage, including the revelation of new views of the police sergeant from Uvalde. Daniel Coronado, who was one of the first on the scene at 11:35 a.m., and UPD officer Justin Mendoza.
According to the video, Coronado identifies the shooter as a “male subject with an AR” at 11:39 a.m., minutes after the gunman first entered classrooms and shortly after he fired at officers who responded. .
There is initial confusion about whether the gunman was in an office, but at 11:42 a.m. a call comes out saying it is the classroom of Eva Mireles, a teacher who called to tell her husband , Uvalde police officer Ruben Ruiz, who has been shot.
Mendoza’s body camera around 12:11 p.m. shows officers learning that BORTAC, a Border Patrol rapid response team, is still 30 minutes away. At the same time, Coronado’s body camera discovers someone calling the shooter in English and Spanish to surrender.
A dispatcher can be heard in Mendoza’s video saying that there is a child on the line of “room 12” talking about a “room full of victims”, which was broadcast to the head of the PD in functions of Uvalde on the scene, Lieutenant Mariano Pargas, who makes no audible comment.
On Sunday, the city of Uvalde announced that Pargas had been placed on administrative leave to further investigate his role in law enforcement response. CNN has contacted Pargas for comment and has not received a response.
New details on the bottom of the shooter
The report did not name the shooter or show his image, “not to glorify him,” he said, but it did provide information about his background, both at home and at school as a student in the Consolidated Independent School District. d’Uvalde.
Although he had “few disciplinary issues,” he struggled academically, as he had only finished ninth grade when he was 17 years old. And the school made “no significant intervention” before it was eventually inadvertently removed from school for poor performance and excessive absences. October.
Because of these absences, the report says, “there was no information really known to the school district that should have identified this attacker as a threat to any school campus.”
But the shooter sent messages about guns to some of his contacts on social media, the report says, and suggested he was going to “do something” that he would hear on the news.
Some users may have reported the behavior on social media platforms, the report states, but the platforms “appear to have done nothing in response.”
Prior to the shooting, several members of the gunman’s family knew he had “asked for help shopping for straw guns that would have been illegal,” the report says. “Family members consistently refused to buy him weapons.”
CNN’s Travis Caldwell, Matthew J. Friedman and Elizabeth Joseph contributed to this report.