A preliminary report by the Texas House investigative committee investigating the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre details a series of errors by different law enforcement agencies, including an overall lackadaisical approach by officials on the site of the shooting, which killed 21 people.
It is only one of the conclusions in the 77-page investigation, which also exposes failings by the Uvalde school district, the shooter's family, and social media sites.
Officials Release Interim Report of Texas School Shooting
However, the committee found no villains other than the gunman throughout its probe, according to the report issued on Sunday. The paper, made accessible to the victims' relatives on Sunday morning, is classified as an interim report. The investigative committee stresses that its work is still unfinished and that several investigations are ongoing.
However, it is the first time that a government inquiry has offered a comprehensive look at the incident and the law enforcement response, which has been widely vilified since the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary. Officials provided contradicting and misleading information in the days following the assault, and major issues regarding the police reaction have gone unresolved since the May 24 shooting.
Among them is why officials waited more than an hour in the school corridor before approaching and executing the gunman, a decision that experts say might have cost lives, CNN reported.
On the day of the massacre, suspended Lt. Mariano Pargas was the top-ranking official in the Uvalde Police Department. According to the special Texas House panel appointed to investigate the day's events, the almost 400 cops who went to the site had an overall lax attitude to dealing with the active shooter, as per New York Post.
"Systemic Failures" in Uvalde School Massacre
Initial reports blamed Uvalde school police commissioner Pete Arredondo, the incident commander who Texas Public Safety Commissioner Steven McCraw stated was in charge of the law enforcement response, for the delay. However, according to the study published on Sunday, the failure spread beyond Arredondo.
According to the report published on Sunday, 376 law enforcement personnel reacted to the incident, with just five officers from the local school police department among them. There would have been 25 Uvalde police officers, 16 sheriff's deputies, and some law enforcement from neighboring counties, but the vast majority were state and federal officials, with 149 Border Patrol officers, 91 state police officers, 13 US Marshals, and eight federal Drug Enforcement Administration officers.
Despite the vast number of officers that reacted, the group lacked clear leadership and communication to respond properly. The responding cops ignored their active shooter training and chose to save the lives of innocent people over their own safety. According to the investigation, there was a relaxed vigilance on the school grounds about intruders, with at least one classroom known for being unsecured. No one had secured the three outer doors on the day of the shooting.
Furthermore, there were regular lockdowns caused by bailouts, which occur when a vehicle carrying suspected illegal migrants crashes during a police pursuit, and the individuals inside the vehicle fled. According to the research, between February and May 2022, there were around 50 alarms relating to bailouts, resulting in a diminished sense of alertness about reacting to security warnings.
The research also disclosed fresh information about the 18-year-old gunman, Salvador Ramos, who was labeled as a school shooter by his girlfriend's pals in 2021. The gunman had made threats against women and had started to show interest in gore and violent sex, watching and occasionally sharing terrible films and photographs of suicides, beheadings, accidents, and the like. According to the report, he did not return to school when it reopened in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Law enforcement officers interviewed family members, studied data on the shooter's phone, and testified before Texas lawmakers. He shot his grandma before the school assault. Members of the committee were scheduled to meet with victims' relatives later Sunday to discuss their report and address their questions.
Last week, some of the material was released to local news sources. The footage showed the shooter going down an empty hallway before stopping to fire into classrooms, as a kid who noticed the attacker rounded a corner and fled. The first police officers entered the building three minutes later, and the shooter opened fire on them.
The video then flashed forward 19 minutes to show a more heavily armed police presence in the corridor, but authorities had yet to approach the gunman. Officers can be seen penetrating the classroom under a hail of gunfire 77 minutes into the edited footage.
Despite early acclaim from Texas politicians for law enforcement's reaction, in the weeks after, local officials had given varying and sometimes contradictory versions of the time between when the shooter entered the school and when US Border Patrol agents unlocked the classroom door and killed him. Abbott claimed days after that cops "misled" him in the immediate aftermath of the incident, according to CBS News.
Related Article : Brittney Griner Update: WNBA Star's Lawyer Reveals New Evidence on Cannabis Use, Anti-Doping Tests in Russian Drug Trial
