The Department of Justice declared the mass shooting that left 21 dead at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022 a law enforcement “failure,” according to a lengthy after-action report the DOJ released Thursday.
The report laid out the timeline of the Robb Elementary School shooting, carried out by 18-year-old former student Salvador Ramos. It noted how law enforcement officers did not kill Ramos until 77 minutes after they arrived on scene.
“The most significant failure was that responding officers should have immediately recognized the incident as an active shooter situation,” the DOJ stated, saying the Uvalde officers had the resources to push forward into classrooms but chose not to.
Ramos killed 19 elementary school students ages 9 to 11, as well as two teachers in their 40s, on May 24, 2022. He injured 17 others.
He also shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face at her residence minutes before arriving at the school, leaving her wounded.
The DOJ’s report indicated that law enforcement could have prevented at least some loss of life and injury that day, and it included dozens of recommendations to avoid a tragedy of that magnitude in the future.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, who met with families of shooting victims in Uvalde one day prior to the report’s release, emphasized the horrors the children in the school experienced.
“As I told families and survivors last night, the Department’s review concluded that a series of major failures — failures in leadership, in tactics, in communication, and in training and preparedness — were made by law enforcement leaders and other officials responding to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary,” Garland said in remarks on Thursday. “I also told the families and survivors how deeply sorry I am for the losses they suffered that day. And for the losses they have endured every day since.”
“And I told the families gathered last night what I hope is clear among the hundreds of pages and thousands of details in this report: Their loved ones deserved better,” Garland added.
The report, the product of a 20-month review, memorialized much of what already became public in the months after the shooting, but it spotlighted the lack of transparency from law enforcement in the immediate aftermath.
Scrutiny of the incident quickly grew, and media questions directed to Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, Uvalde Police Department, and Texas Department of Public Services became more “suspicious and aggressive,” the report observed.
“The media questions were an extension of the pressing questions from the victims’ family members and others,” it stated.
The report found that 11 officers initially responded to the shooting and nearly entered the two classrooms where shots were being fired before they retreated.
As more officers began arriving at the scene, chaos ensued. The officers displayed a lack of urgency and treated the incident as someone “barricaded” in classrooms rather than an “active shooter” event, the report said. Many officers on the scene mistakenly thought the shooter was dead, and a lack of leadership caused confusion about who was in charge, paralyzing first responders while the shooter continued terrorizing and killing children yards away, the report stated.
These were among the several “critical failures and other breakdowns” and “cascading” leadership missteps that exacerbated the deadly event, the report said.
Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) said in response to the report that his state took “swift action” to improve school security after the shooting and that it has already implemented some of the DOJ’s recommendations.
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“We will continue to evaluate all possible means of making our schools safer, and we will carefully review all other recommendations the Department has offered to prevent future tragedies across our state,” Abbott said.
Read the full DOJ report here.
