OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The Uvalde police who responded to the tragic school shooting by standing around for more than an hour and not rescuing anyone until it was far too late, have gotten some tough news.
On Tuesday the Uvalde City Council announced that it would be investigating every officer who responded to the scene at Robb Elementary School on May 24, CNN reported.
“This investigation is looking at every single officer and what his actions — what he did, what our policy says — and basically, we’re gonna get a report on everybody,” Ernest “Chip” King III, a member of the council, said, “we will act on it, and we promise that to you.”
Jesse Prado, the lead investigator and a former Austin police detective, will be doing the interviews.
“He’s gonna be conducting the investigation and we’re gonna let the investigation go, see what he determines, but everybody that’s Uvalde PD that was there will be held accountable for their actions,” he said.
The law enforcement response to the massacre, the second deadliest at a US K-12 school, has been widely criticized due to the 80-minute delay between when the first shots were fired and the gunman was finally killed.
Uvalde police officers were some of the first law enforcement personnel to arrive at the school where a gunman fired at people outside, entered the school through a side door and went into a classroom where he fired more than 100 bullets.
In all, almost 400 officers from two dozen agencies responded to the shooting on May 24.
The Uvalde Police Department has 39 sworn officers, officials said Tuesday. Twenty-five of them went to the shooting scene, according to a report from a Texas House investigative committee.
“I know parents want answers. Nobody wants to give those answers more than I do on the city council,” Council member Hector R. Luevano said on Tuesday.
“I’m a former police officer, so I have some insight into actions that need to be taken,” he said.
“I can assure the families in this community that I’m going to do everything within my power as a member of this council to give you the answers that you need to hear,” the council member said.
“If there’s any officer that’s in violation of any policy or procedure that they needed to act on and did not and might have caused these children to die, these teachers to die, I can assure you, heads are going to roll,” he said.
On-scene video that was exclusively obtained by Austin American-Statesman and KVUE shows mass confusion inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, as well as the chaotic first moments as the massacre there, began to unfold.
An 18-year-old male shooter killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School and the video clearly features sights and sounds from that tragic day.
The footage shows the killer crashing his vehicle before getting out and taking shots at people approaching his vehicle, and then directly at the school.
Next, a female teacher is then heard yelling, “The kids are running! Oh my God … Get down! Get in your room! Get in your rooms!”
In addition, the video includes audio of when shots are first fired at the school from outside the building.
From there, the killer is seen entering the school at 11:33 a.m. At one point, a young student comes around a hallway and sees the shooter but the shooter does not see the student.
NEW
The @statesman and @KVUE have obtained body cam footage and security camera footage from the shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary.
Pay close attention to the time stamp in the upper left hand corner.
You don’t see anyone get shot in this video. https://t.co/HsytsOa0tR pic.twitter.com/L9JSse9SeD
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) July 12, 2022
Caption on the video tells viewers that the shooter then opened fire inside two classrooms for two and a half minutes, firing more than 100 rounds. That particular footage, however, has been removed from the video, as well as screams from the children. The shots are not eliminated from the soundtrack, however.
Then, at 11:36 a.m., just three minutes later, officers are seen inside the school. At least three of the officers rush toward the classrooms while several others hang back. But after they heard shots, the officers retreat to another hallway, the video appears to show.
More officers arrive, but at 12:09 p.m., not a single rescue attempt has been made, the video says in a caption.
