Not all officer video from Texas school shooting was released, Uvalde police say
Not all videos from Uvalde, Texas officers, school shooting 2022 was given to news organizations under court orders, police said Wednesday. Police also announced an internal investigation into why the material was not discovered until after a large trove of footage was released over the weekend.
A large collection of audio and video recordings The report about the police’s halting response at Robb Elementary School, where a gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers in a fourth-grade classroom, was released Saturday by city officials after a lengthy legal battle with The Associated Press and other news organizations.
It wasn’t immediately clear what the unreleased video shows. The department discovered “multiple additional videos” after a Uvalde officer said some of his bodycam footage of the May 24, 2022, shooting was not included in the original release of the material, the city said in a statement.
The statement said an internal investigation should determine ‘how this omission occurred’, who is responsible and whether disciplinary measures are necessary.
“The community and public of Uvalde deserve nothing less,” Uvalde Police Chief Homer Delgado said in the statement.
The unreleased video was turned over to the office of Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell for review.
The Associated Press and other news organizations filed a lawsuit after officials initially refused to release the information. The massacre was one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.
The police’s delayed response to the shooting has been widely condemned as a colossal failure: Nearly 400 officers waited more than 70 minutes before confronting the gunman in a classroom full of dead and wounded children and teachers. Families of the victims have long sought accountability for the slow response by police in the South Texas city of about 15,000 people 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of San Antonio.
Nearly 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 91 state troopers, as well as school and city police, responded to the shooting. As terrified students and teachers called 911 from classrooms, dozens of officers stood in the hallways, trying to figure out what to do. Desperate parents gathered outside the building begged them to come inside.
Some of the 911 calls released over the weekend were from terrified instructors. One described “many, many gunshots,” while another sobbed into the phone as a dispatcher urged her to stay still. “Quick, quick, quick, quick!” the first instructor shouted before hanging up.