The U.S. Justice Department has released a scathing report outlining several critical failures by police during the 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two teachers died.
"The law enforcement response at Robb Elementary on May 24th, 2022 — and the response by officials in the hours and days after — was a failure," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. "As a consequence of failed leadership, training, and policies, 33 students and three of their teachers — many of whom had been shot — were trapped in a room with an active shooter for over an hour as law enforcement officials remained outside."
The report, more than 600 pages, begins with the words of nine- and ten-year-old children during a call with 911. At this point in time, they had been trapped in classrooms 111 and 112 with an active shooter armed with an AR-15 style assault rifle for 37 minutes.
"I don't want to die. My teacher is dead."
"One of my teachers is still alive but shot."
"There is a lot of dead bodies."
The call lasted for nearly 27 minutes. Even though law enforcement were in the hallway, just outside the classrooms, it was another 13 minutes after the call ended before police rescued the survivors.
"For 77 agonizing, harrowing minutes, children and staff were trapped with an active shooter. They experienced unimaginable horror," the report states. "The survivors witnessed unspeakable violence and the death of classmates and teachers."
The report examines "the multiple failures in the response to the shooting," including the breakdowns in leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training that contributed to those failures. It describes the responding officers' most significant failure as not treating the incident throughout as an active shooter situation and using the available and sufficient resources and equipment to push forward immediately and continuously to eliminate the threat.
Within three minutes of the shooter's entry into the school, the first officers arrived at the scene. Although several officers initially ran toward classrooms 111/112, they quickly retreated to positions of cover once shots were fired from inside one of the rooms. After retreating, law enforcement responders began treating the incident as a barricaded subject scenario rather than as an active shooter situation.
"Instead, law enforcement focused on calls for additional SWAT equipment (which should not delay the response to an active shooter), requests for delivery of classroom keys and breaching tools (which may not have been necessary to gain entry), and orders to evacuate surrounding classrooms
prior to making entry into classrooms 111/112," the report noted.
Then-school Police Chief Pete Arredondo, described by the Justice Department as the de facto on-scene commander, directed officers at several points to delay making entry into classrooms 111/112, according to the report. Arredondo was also without his radios, having discarded them during his arrival, and communicated to others either verbally or via cell phone throughout the response, the report said.
Officials noted that leadership on scene did not establish an incident command structure to provide timely direction and coordination and as a result, the overwhelming number of responders who arrived on the scene did not receive accurate updates on the situation or direction for how to support the response efforts.
"Many arriving officers — based on inaccurate information on the scene and shared over the radio or from observing the lack of urgency toward entering classrooms 111/112 — incorrectly believed that the subject had already been killed or that UCISD PD Chief Arredondo was in the room with the subject," the report states.
At 12:21 p.m., 48 minutes after the subject entered the school, four additional shots were fired inside classrooms 111/112, "which should have spurred greater urgency to confront the subject but instead set off a renewed search for keys," the report noted. Officers moved toward the classroom doors but did not make entry and instead, tested a set of keys on the door of a janitor's closet next to room 112, according to the report.
When the keys didn't work, officers spent 15 minutes looking for another set before they found one.
"With working keys in hand, the officers then waited to determine whether a sniper and a drone could obtain sight of and eliminate the subject through the window. Those efforts were unsuccessful," the report added.
At 12:48 p.m., 27 minutes after hearing multiple gunshots inside classrooms 111/112, and 75 minutes after first responders first entered Robb Elementary, officers opened the door to room 111 and fatally shot the subject when he emerged shooting from a closet, according to the report.
The shooter was killed at approximately 12:50 p.m., 77 minutes after the first officers entered the school and after 45 rounds were fired in the presence of officers.
The report indicates a major contributing factor in the delay to making entry into rooms 111/112 was Arredondo's intentional decision to clear and evacuate others from the school.
"The time it took to evacuate the entire building was 43 minutes, beginning at around 11:38 a.m., when Chief Arredondo realized there were occupants in room 109 that he could not access, and ending at 12:21 p.m., when four shots were fired, and that same room was finally evacuated through the windows," the report states.
"During this time and prior to 12:21 p.m., there were multiple stimuli indicating that there was an active threat in classrooms 111/112—including: the barrage of gunfire during the initial response; the children and teachers observed when evacuating the classrooms; the single shot fired at 11:44 a.m.; the notification that class was in session; the notification from an officer on scene that his wife, a teacher, was inside classrooms 111/112 and shot; and multiple radio broadcasts of a 911 call from a student inside the classroom," the report continued.
The report also examines the communications challenges during and after the shooting, including the inaccurate narrative that was initially delivered. It documents the trauma and support services that were provided, as well as those that were not provided, to victims, survivors, family members and responders. For example, at the hospital where wounded and deceased victims were transported, some families received incorrect information suggesting their loved ones had survived when they had not. Others were notified of the deaths of their family members by personnel untrained in delivering such painful news, the report added.
Law enforcement failed at nearly every level to act consistent with generally accepted practices in active shooter response that were adopted following the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, according to the report.
"The first priority must be to immediately neutralize the subject; everything else, including officer safety, is subordinate to that objective. Accordingly, when a subject has already shot numerous victims and is in a room with additional victims, efforts first must be dedicated to making entry into the room, stopping the subject, and rendering aid to victims," the report states. "These efforts must be undertaken regardless of the equipment and personnel available to those first on the scene."
The report is based on more than 14,000 pieces of data and documentation, according to the Justice Department. The full report is available on the COPS Office website.