Tragic 911 calls, body camera footage from Uvalde, Texas school shooting released
The city of Uvalde, Texas, has released a trove of records from the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in May 2022, marking the largest and most substantial disclosure of documents since that day.
The records include body camera footage, dashcam video, 911 and non-emergency calls, text messages and other redacted documents. The release comes as part of the resolution of a legal case brought by a coalition of media outlets, including the Austin American-Statesman, part of the USA TODAY Network, and its parent company, Gannett.
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Body cameras worn by officers show the chaos at the school as the shooting scene unfolded. One piece of footage shows several officers cautiously approaching the school.
"Watch windows! Watch windows," one officer says. When notified that the gunman was armed with an "AR," short for the semiautomatic AR-15, the officers responds with a single expletive.
The bloodbath inside the classrooms of Uvalde's Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, is worst mass shooting at an educational institution in Texas history. The gunman armed with a semiautomatic rifle killed 19 fourth graders and two of their teachers before being taken out by officers more than an hour after the terror inside the building began.
Release includes 911 calls from teacher, shooter's uncle
The records include more than a dozen calls to 911, including in the earliest moments of the shooting.
At 11:33 a.m., a man screams to an operator: "He's inside the school! Oh my God in the name of Jesus, he's inside the school shooting at the kids."
In a separate call, a teacher inside Robb Elementary, who remained on the line with a 911 operator for 28 minutes after dialing in at 11:36 a.m., remains silent for most of the call but occasionally whispers. At one point her voice cracks and she cries: "I'm scared. They are banging at my door."
The 911 calls also come from a man who identified himself as the shooter's uncle.
He calls at 12:57 – just minutes after a SWAT team breached the classroom and killed the gunman – expressing a desire to speak to his nephew. He explains to the operator that sometimes the man will listen to him.
"Oh my God, please don't do nothing stupid," he says.
"I think he is shooting kids," the uncle says. "Why did you do this? Why?"
News organizations still pushing for release of more records
The Texas Department of Public Safety is still facing a lawsuit from 14 news organizations, including the American-Statesman, that requests records from the shooting, including footage from the scene and internal investigations.
The department has not released the records despite a judge ruling in the news organizations’ favor in March. The agency cites objections from Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell.
In June, a state district judge in Uvalde County ordered the Uvalde school district and sheriff's office to release records related to the shooting to news outlets, but the records have not yet been made available. The records' release is pending while the matter is under appeal.
"We're thankful the city of Uvalde is taking this step toward transparency," attorney Laura Prather, who represented the coalition, said Saturday. "Transparency is necessary to help Uvalde heal and allow us to all understand what happened and learn how to prevent future tragedies."
Law enforcement agencies that converged on Robb Elementary after the shooting began have been under withering criticism for waiting 77 minutes to confront the gunman. Surveillance video footage first obtained by the American-Statesman and the Austin ABC affiliate KVUE nearly seven months after the carnage shows in excruciating detail dozens of heavily armed and body-armor-clad officers from local, state and federal agencies in helmets walking back and forth in the hallway.
Some left the camera's frame and then reappeared. Others trained their weapons toward the classroom, talked, made cellphone calls, sent texts and looked at floor plans but did not enter or attempt to enter the classrooms.
Even after hearing at least four additional shots from the classrooms 45 minutes after police arrived on the scene, the officers waited.