SAN ANTONIO — The Uvalde City Council learned the results of an independent review into the police response at Robb Elementary during a public meeting Thursday.
The investigation was announced in July 2022. It is one of multiple inquiries into the deadly massacre that killed 19 students and two teachers after it took law enforcement 77 minutes to confront and kill the active shooter.
Council members met in private before results were presented publicly. The report was given by an investigator from the Austin area who was hired by the city to conduct the review.
The investigator found massive failures from law enforcement, echoing the findings of other reports, including one nearly two months ago from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The findings also confirmed that Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo was supposed to be the incident commander on scene. This was established by a Memorandum of Understanding between UCISD Police and the Uvalde Police Department
The investigator went into detail about the failures from law enforcement in training, communication and equipment. He particularly focused on the early efforts to breach the fourth-grade classroom where a gunman had started shooting students.
He said those efforts failed due to lack of training in breaching techniques and lack of understanding on how to use breaching equipment.
Several family members of victims walked out in anger midway through the presentation. Others who remained for the public comment section of the meeting blasted the conclusions reached by Prado’s team, which stand in contrast to scathing and sweeping state and federal past reports that faulted police at every level.
“You said they did it in good faith. You call that good faith? They stood there 77 minutes,” said Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose daughter was among those killed in the attack.
Another person in the room screamed, “Cowards!”
Ahead of the report’s release, the Uvalde Foundation for Kids provided a statement, saying, "We need no report to tell us who failed. We know what happened in Uvalde."
Instead, the foundation says it hopes the report will reignite a drive to prevent another tragedy.
The mass shooting in Uvalde is expected to be mentioned as part of President Biden's State of the Union Address on Thursday night. The sister of victim Jackie Cazares will be in attendance.
According to White House officials, Jazmin Cazares will be one of a few guests seated in the First Lady’s box. Since her sister’s death, Jazmin has been an advocate for gun violence prevention at the state and national level.
She has even testified for tighter background checks and extreme risk protection order laws.
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