UVALDE, Texas — More than two years after the Uvalde school shooting, we are still learning more about the tragedy and the police response to it.
A coalition of media organizations sued the City of Uvalde in August 2022 to access records that were previously not being made public. On Saturday at noon, the city released these records -- 19 recorded emergency calls to 911, 11 police audio dispatch and phone call recordings, 234 non-emergency police calls, 301 police radio recordings, a dozen bodycam videos, three dashcam videos, 33 police documents and 15 text message screenshots -- as part of a settlement agreement.
Among the coalition involved in the lawsuit were TEGNA stations WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth, KHOU 11 in Houston, KENS 5 in San Antonio, KVUE in Austin, KCEN in Waco, KBMT in Beaumont, KYTX in Tyler, KIII in Corpus Christi, KWES in Midland-Odessa, KIDY/KXVA in Abilene-San Angelo and KAGS in College Station.
The records we've reviewed so far from the City of Uvalde's Saturday release show only some of what happened on May 24, 2022, when 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School were shot and killed by an 18-year-old with an AR-15 in the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. 17 others were also injured in the shooting.
Other public records from that day -- from Uvalde CISD, Uvalde County and Texas DPS -- have still yet to see the light of day, debates over their release still tied up in litigation.
The response to the shooting by multiple law enforcement agencies in the immediate aftermath of the shooter's arrival on the Robb Elementary campus has been widely seen as a failure, leading to government investigations and reviews. Only 77 minutes after officers arrived on the scene, and following 45 rounds being fired by the shooter, did police neutralize the threat he posed.
The materials released Saturday do not much change the narrative surrounding the shooting, but do add some new details to better understand the context of what took place that day.
Included in the release is a recording of a 911 call from a man claiming to be the shooter’s uncle, who can be heard begging dispatchers to have police pick him up and take him to the school so he could talk to his nephew and possibly help talk him down and prevent more violence.
“Maybe he could listen to me -- because he does listen to me, everything I tell him he does listen to me,” the man said on the 911 call. “Maybe he could stand down or do something to turn himself in.”
He said his nephew, who had been with him at his house the night before, stayed with him in his bedroom all night, and had told him that he was upset because his grandmother was “bugging” him.
“Oh my God, please, please, don’t do nothing stupid,” the man says on the call at one point when a dispatcher had placed him on hold. “I think he’s shooting kids.”
That call, however, came just before 1 p.m. -- minutes after the shooting had ended and law enforcement had killed the shooter.
Before arriving at the school, the shooter shot and wounded his grandmother at her home. He then took a pickup from the home and drove to the school.
An incident report included in the records release from Sgt. Bobby Ruiz of the Uvalde Police Department details his experience in being asked to leave the Robb Elementary campus in order to secure the residence where the "the incident possibly began."
Upon arriving at the scene -- later determined to be the house where the shooter lived with his grandparents -- Ruiz said he heard a female on the scene express concern over the grandmother's well-being. Later, he said he heard another woman he could not identify say that she was related to the shooter, and that she "had been up up with him last night due to [him] wanting to commit suicide."
In another recording released on Saturday, one of the teachers inside Robb Elementary who frantically dialed 911 described “a lot, a whole lot of gunshots."
In a separate recording, another teacher sobbed into the phone as a dispatcher urged her to stay quiet in order to remain safe.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry!” the first teacher cried before hanging up.
One of the first calls police received on the morning of May 24, 2022, came from a woman who called 911 to report that a pickup truck had crashed into a ditch nearby Robb Elementary, and that the occupant had then been seen running onto the school campus.
“Oh my God, they have a gun,” she said on the recording.
In a 911 call recording from just a few minutes later, a man screams into the phone,
"He’s shooting at the kids -- get back!" he yells as the screams of others can be heard in the background. "He’s inside the school! He’s inside the school! Oh my God, in the name of Jesus, he’s inside the school shooting at the kids.”
The gunman was fatally shot by authorities at 12:50 p.m. He had entered the school at 11:33 a.m., officials said.
Among the videos released Saturday was footage from Uvalde Police Sgt. Eduardo Canales' bodycam, which shows him approaching the door to Room 112 -- one of two adjoining rooms where all of the shooting deaths on this day took place -- when another officer shouts "Watch that door!”
Four shots then ring out, and Canales believes he’s been hit.
"Am I bleeding?" he can be heard asking. "He got me, right? He’s in the class… We’ve got to get in there.”
Canales later confirms he got hit with shrapnel to his ear.
“I’m bleeding from my ear," he says in the video. "The guy is actually shooting."
Multiple federal and state investigations into the slow law enforcement response laid bare cascading problems in training, communication, leadership and technology, and questioned whether officers prioritized their own lives over those of children and teachers in the South Texas city of about 15,000 people 80 miles west of San Antonio.
Families of the victims have long sought accountability for the slow police response.
Brett Cross’ 10-year-old nephew, Uziyah Garcia, was among those killed. Cross, who was raising the boy as a son, was angered relatives weren’t told ahead of time that Saturday's records were being released, and also expressed frustration that it took so long for them to be made public.
“If we thought we could get anything we wanted, we’d ask for a time machine to go back in time and save our children -- but we can’t, so all we are asking for is for justice, accountability and transparency, and they refuse to give this to us,” Cross said. “This [is a] small, simple ask that I feel that we are due.”
Two of the responding officers now face criminal charges: Former Uvalde school Police Chief Pete Arredondo and former school officer Adrian Gonzales have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of child abandonment and endangerment. A Texas state trooper in Uvalde who had been suspended was reinstated to his job earlier this month.
Arredondo has said he thinks he’s been “scapegoated” as the one to blame for the botched law enforcement response.
Some of the victims' families have called for more officers to be charged, and they have filed federal and state lawsuits against law enforcement, social media, online gaming companies and the gun manufacturer that made the rifle the gunman used.
Just before officers finally breached the classroom, one officer can be heard on bodycam footage expressing concern about friendly fire.
“I’m kind of worried about blue-on-blue,” an officer said. “There are so many rifles in here.”
The eventual classroom breach was followed by about five to six seconds of gunfire.
Officers rushed forward as someone shouted, “Watch the kids! Watch the kids! Watch the kids!”
Less than a minute into the chaos, someone shouted, ”“Where’s the suspect?”
Someone else immediately answered: “He’s dead!”
The police response included nearly 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 91 state police officials, as well as school and city police.
While dozens of officers stood in the hallway trying to figure out what to do, students inside the classroom called 911 on cellphones, begging for help, and desperate parents who had gathered outside the building pleaded with officers to go in.
A tactical team eventually entered the classroom and killed the shooter.
Previously released video from school cameras showed police officers, some armed with rifles and bulletproof shields, waiting in the hallway.
A report commissioned by the city, however, defended the actions of local police, saying officers showed “immeasurable strength” and “level-headed thinking” as they faced fire from the shooter and refrained from firing into a darkened classroom.
The victims
As we get new information in about that day in 2022, we also want to again remember the 19 students and two teachers who died. These are the victims of the Robb Elementary mass shooting.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.