The May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, could have been stopped sooner, according to a new Justice Department report released Thursday nearly 20 months after the massacre.
The police response to the Uvalde school shooting, in which 19 students and two teachers died, was rife with “failure” as law-enforcement officers did not eliminate the gunman in a timely manner, despite quickly arriving to the scene. It took 77 minutes for local police to stop the 18-year-old active shooter between the arrival of first responders at Robb Elementary School and the killing of the shooter, according to the 610-page report.
“The response to the May 24, 2022, mass casualty incident at Robb Elementary School was a failure,” the report, a copy of which was obtained by CNN earlier in the day, concludes. The full report was released later Thursday.
The incident is known for local and state officials’ inaccurate assessment of the situation, which Uvalde School District police chief Pete Arredondo initially described as a “barricaded suspect” operation rather than an “active shooter” scenario, affecting how first responders acted that day.
“Officers on scene should have recognized the incident as an active shooter scenario and moved and pushed forward immediately and continuously toward the threat until the room was entered, and the threat was eliminated,” the report states. “That did not occur.”
This inaccurate assessment was the “single most critical tactical failure,” the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services states in the document.
Law-enforcement officers ran toward the sound of gunfire in the school but then stopped outside two classrooms before killing the shooter, Salvador Ramos.
“Several of the first officers on scene initially acted consistent with generally accepted practices to try to engage the subject, and they moved quickly towards classrooms 111/112 within minutes of arriving,” the report reads. “But once they retreated after being met with gunfire, the law enforcement responders, including UCISD PD Chief Pete Arredondo – who we conclude was the de facto on-scene incident commander – began treating the incident as a barricaded subject scenario and not as an active shooter situation.”
Officers retreated after suffering “graze wounds from shrapnel” and then improperly waited for SWAT teams before breaching the classroom doors. They also waited to retrieve classroom keys and breaching equipment that may not have been necessary for entry, while evacuating the surrounding classrooms before entering rooms 111/112.
U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland met with the Uvalde victims’ families the night before the report’s release, he told reporters at a Thursday press conference.
“I told the families gathered last night what I hope is clear among the hundreds of pages and thousands of details in this report: their loved ones deserved better,” Garland said.
The federal government’s latest findings are similar to those from a separate investigation by the Texas house, which published its own report in July 2022.
The Justice Department said the goal of its critical-incident review was “to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses; identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events; and provide a roadmap for community safety and engagement before, during, and after such incidents.”