Following the publication of the report, the mayor of Uvalde, Don McLaughlin, said that the acting chief during the shooting, Lieutenant Mariano Pargas, had been put on administrative leave and that the city had started its own internal research. The city posted images from the body camera documenting the actions of Uvalde’s agents at the scene.
The facts set out in the report also made it clear that neither existing gun laws nor extended background checks passed by Congress in response to the shooting would have prevented the gunman, Salvador Ramos, from get the weapon he used.
Although some colleagues refer to him as a “school shooter,” the gunman had no documented background that prevented him from buying a gun. The Republican-controlled Texas legislature has so far not considered any legislation restricting firearms in response to the Uvalde shooting, focusing much of its attention during public hearings on police response and school safety. .
While the narrative presented by the committee added disturbing new details, it did not substantially change public understanding of what happened at Robb Elementary School, as has been gathered by The New York Times and other news organizations over the weeks. intermediates.
Instead, he deepened the sense of a rudderless law enforcement response.
Officers concentrated on the north and south sides of classrooms where the gunman was hiding, but did not communicate with each other, according to the report. Despite the search for a master key to the classroom by the school’s police chief, Pete Arredondo and others, no one called the principal, who had one. The usefulness of a specialized tool for opening the door was tested, but it was later rejected as too dangerous for officers.
The head of the UValde police department called from his vacation to tell the acting chief, Lieutenant Pargas, to install a command post. Mr. Pargas did so in an office of a funeral home across the street, but then left him shortly after. “This did not result in the establishment of an effective command post,” the report found.