Uvalde school shooting: Victims’ families condemn new report
Families of the victims have expressed their indignation following a report that absolved the police of any wrongdoing in the tragic 2022 mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
According to independent investigator Jesse Prado, the police officers’ actions were deemed to be in good faith, despite previous criticisms regarding the slow response.
Veronica Mata, whose 10-year-old daughter was among the victims, expressed disbelief, stating, “You call that good faith? They stood there for 77 minutes.”
The assailant, Salvador Ramos, a former student, claimed the lives of 19 pupils and two teachers during the attack on May 24, 2022, marking one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.
Mr. Prado’s presentation incited a vehement reaction from some of the victims’ families. Several relatives of the deceased students and teachers left the presentation in anger at Uvalde’s city hall before Mr. Prado concluded his findings.
Appointed by Uvalde’s city council to investigate the local police response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School, the former police detective presented his report on Thursday.
He said the police had committed no serious acts of misconduct.
At the same time, the investigator said there were communication problems between the responding officers, poor training for live shooter situations, lack of specialist equipment, and delays in breaching the classroom where the gunman was.
Ms Mata was quoted by CNN as saying police had “waited after they got call after call that kids were still alive in there” before going in.
“We’re going to stand here and we’re going to keep fighting for our own because nobody else is going to do it,” she added.
Previous scathing reports by multiple US federal agencies have faulted the Uvalde Police Department officers at virtually every level.
In January, the US Justice Department said in its sharply critical report that chaos and a lack of urgency had plagued the police response.
The report described how police officers remained in a hallway or outside the school as the gunman shot dozens of people in two classrooms.
Nearly 400 officers responded to the attack – but it took 77 minutes after the first officers arrived for police to confront and kill the 18-year-old shooter, according to the document.
That slow response was the major focus of the report, which found police had failed to understand there was an active shooter and said there were “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training”.
A separate report by the Texas House of Representatives committee in July 2022 found “systemic failures and egregiously poor decision-making” by those involved in the response.
