Finalist: Austin American-Statesman, in collaboration with the USA Today Network

By Tony Plohetski

Editor's note: The video footage, audio, and events described in this story about the Uvalde school shooting are disturbing. Discretion is advised. This exclusive story and video are being made available free of charge as a public service. If you value strong journalism from the American-Statesman, support us by subscribing. You can read more about our decision to publish this video here.

The gunman walks into Robb Elementary School unimpeded, moments after spraying bullets from his semi-automatic rifle outside the building and after desperate calls to 911 from inside and outside the Uvalde school.

He slows down to peek around a corner in the hallway and flips back his hair before proceeding toward classrooms 111 and 112.

Seconds later, a boy with neatly combed hair and glasses exits the bathroom to head back to his class. As he begins to turn the corner, he notices the gunman standing by the classroom door and then firing his first barrage.

The boy turns and runs back into the bathroom.

The gunman enters one of the classrooms. Children scream. The gunfire continues, stops, then starts again. Stops, then starts again. And again. And again.

It is almost three minutes before three officers arrive in the same hallway and rush toward the classrooms, crouching down. Then, a burst of gunfire. One officer grabs the back of his head. They quickly retreat to the end of the hallway, just below a school surveillance camera.

A 77-minute video recording captured from this vantage point, along with body camera footage from one of the responding officers, obtained by the American-Statesman and KVUE, shows in excruciating detail dozens of sworn officers, local, state and federal — heavily armed, clad in body armor, with helmets, some with protective shields — walking back and forth in the hallway, some leaving the camera frame and then reappearing, others training their weapons toward the classroom, talking, making cellphone calls, sending texts and looking at floor plans, but not entering or attempting to enter the classrooms.

The Statesman is publishing an edited version of the video to show how the law enforcement response unfolded.

Even after hearing at least four additional shots from the classrooms 45 minutes after police arrived on the scene, the officers waited.

They asked for keys to one of the classrooms. (It was unlocked, investigators said later.) They brought tear gas and gas masks. They later carried a sledgehammer. And still, they waited.

Officers finally rushed into the classroom and killed the gunman an hour and 14 minutes after police first arrived on the scene. Nineteen fourth graders and their two teachers died in the massacre on May 24, days before the end of the school year.

The video tells in real time the brutal story of how heavily armed officers failed to immediately launch a cohesive and aggressive response to stop the shooter and save more children if possible. And it reinforces the trauma of those parents, friends and bystanders who were outside the school and pleaded with police to do something, and for those survivors who quietly called 911 from inside the classroom to beg for help.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw has said that the person he identified as the incident commander, school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, treated the situation as a barricaded subject, which calls for a slower, methodical response, not an active shooter situation, in which police are charged with doing anything possible to stop a gunman, including putting their own lives on the line. That was a mistake, McCraw has said. Officers should have confronted the gunman as soon as they arrived, carrying enough firepower to breach the classroom and stop the shooting, McCraw has said.

McCraw has singled out Arredondo for blame in restraining officers from going in earlier than they did. But the video shows multiple responding agencies on the scene, including officers from the Uvalde Police Department, Uvalde County sheriff's department, Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Rangers, U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Marshals Service.

The video file obtained by the Statesman, part of the investigative file, includes security video footage from a nearby funeral home showing the gunman arrive at the school by wrecking a pickup in a ditch, and includes audio of 911 calls and officers speaking in the hallway, as well as the sound of gunfire.

More gunshots and more delays

At 12:21 p.m., 45 minutes after police first arrived on the scene, four shots are heard and at least a dozen officers move toward the classroom.

An officer can be heard saying, "They're making entry."

Yet they do not.

At 12:30, an officer wearing a helmet and ballistic vest pauses to squirt hand sanitizer from a wall-mounted dispenser and rubs his hands together. Other armed officers walk back and forth, and discuss the classroom doors and windows. The hunt for the keys continues. One officer eventually brings a sledgehammer. The audio from the surveillance camera at times is garbled, but it is loud in the crowded hallway.

At 12:41, a man wearing blue rubber gloves and a black shirt, khaki pants and a black baseball cap, with a stethoscope around his neck, arrives and speaks to officers. Other paramedics arrive with supplies. Two officers in camouflage fist-bump each other.

At 12:50, a cadre of officers crouches outside the classroom. A burst of gunfire is heard, and the video ends. Authorities have said a Border Patrol officer killed the gunman. Investigators are awaiting the results of an analysis from an Austin-based medical expert on how many victims died after police first arrived.

The Statesman is also publishing the full video in its entirety.

Officials debate video release

The video has been the subject of an intense political debate, with Gov. Greg Abbott and the Uvalde mayor urging its public release and the Uvalde County district attorney opposing releasing it, apparently citing an active investigation into the shooting.

State Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock and the chairman of the House committee investigating the shooting, said Tuesday that the committee plans to show the hallway video to members of the Uvalde community on Sunday, as well as discuss the panel's preliminary report. He then plans to release both to the public. The video that the House committee will make available will not include footage of the gunman walking into the school and the view from the hallway of the gunman initially firing his way into the classrooms. The video the Statesman obtained includes that footage. Neither version shows children, teachers or the gunman being shot.

Those seeking video's public release say it will bring clarity to the families of victims and others in Uvalde traumatized by the shooting, especially after state leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott, presented shifting accounts of the police response. Abbott has said he was misled but has not said by whom.

Further obscuring the truth of what happened May 24, local, state and federal officials have denied requests to release documents that could shed light on the police response, including 911 call transcripts, body camera footage, communications among law enforcement officers and arrest records from that day. They have appealed to the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who will make final decisions on the records disputes.

Meanwhile, anger boiled over at a Sunday night march and rally in Uvalde for greater gun restrictions, with some residents saying they no longer trust the local authorities and demanding answers.

By Manny Garcia

The American-Statesman is publishing a video account of the delayed police response at Uvalde's Robb Elementary School after a gunman walked into two classrooms and killed 19 children and their two teachers.

The video that we obtained is one hour and 22 minutes long. It is tragic to listen to and watch. Our decision to publish, along with our news partner, KVUE, comes after long and thoughtful discussions.

The Statesman is publishing two versions of the video, one that we edited to just over four minutes and highlights critical moments: the ease of the gunman entering the school, how he shot his way into the classroom, the repeated sound of gunfire, and then the delay by police to stop the killer for 77 minutes as dozens of heavily armed officers stage in the school hallway before a group finally storms the classroom and kills the gunman.

We are also publishing the entire video for those who want to see what we obtained. In both videos we blurred the identity of a child who exits a restroom as the shooter approaches the classroom. The child runs back to the restroom to hide and was later rescued. We also have removed the sound of children screaming as the gunman enters the classroom. We consider this too graphic.

We also have chosen to show the face of the gunman as he enters this school. Our news organization guidelines state that we should not glorify these individuals and give them the notoriety that they seek. We chose, in this instance, to show his face to chisel away at any conspiracy that we are hiding something. This last point included much discussion among our senior leaders, our Managing Editor for Standards Michael McCarter, our lead reporter, Tony Plohetski, and his editor, Bob Gee.

We also are publishing a narrative story. Our editorial process for the video and story also included a thorough legal review. Our goal is to continue to bring to light what happened at Robb Elementary, which the families and friends of the Uvalde shooting victims have long been asking for since the tragedy on May 24.

The video starts with the gunman wrecking a pickup outside the school, then shooting at two good Samaritans who are not hit and flee. The gunman jumps a fence and walks toward the school, and he begins shooting again. By then, callers have dialed 911, children are running. The audio of a 911 call is included in the video. The killer opens the outside door to the elementary school and enters, now with a bit more caution, toward the classrooms where he opens fire.

You hear children screaming, and more gunshots, followed by a pause, and then more gunshots, and then sporadic gunshots. Authorities have said he fired more than 100 shots. Some three minutes after the shooting begins, three officers initially respond and run to the classroom door, where there is more gunfire, and the three officers retreat to the end of the hallway and stand behind the corners that provide some cover.

For the next hour-plus, officers congregate in the hallway, and then more show up. Heavily armed officers from at least five agencies stand in the hallway that lead to the classrooms. These officers carry dozens of high-powered rifles, handguns, vests, helmets, camouflage gear and shields.

We know now — thanks to the many news organizations that continue to dig for the facts — that some students quietly called 911 from inside the classrooms for help, a critically wounded teacher could hear officers just outside the classroom, and that 911 dispatchers were fielding their calls of desperation.

We also know that exasperated parents, family members and bystanders standing outside the school begged authorities to do something.

After 77 minutes, the video shows the officers breach the classroom. There is gunfire, and we know that the gunman was shot dead. And then the video shortly ends. What we do not see is the officers when they see or realize the death toll inside the classrooms.

We have to bear witness to history, and transparency with unrelenting reporting is a way to bring change.

This tragedy has been made further tragic by changing stories, heroic-sounding narratives proven to be false, and a delay or in most cases rejection of media requests for public information by law enforcement leaders, public officials and elected leaders. Many of the requests now rest in the hands of Attorney General Ken Paxton's office, who has not yet decided what should be released.

But there are also heroes: elected leaders, public officials, law enforcement officers and survivors of the massacre who want the truth out. The truth always wins, maybe not on our clock, but the truth always prevails.

And that is the reason that we publish alongside KVUE.

This story is part of a much larger public records and legal battle from our journalists, aligned with reporters in Uvalde, around Texas and the United States, to obtain all videos of the tragedy, body-camera footage, communications, 911 calls and more.

We are all aligned for the truth. Thank you for your time and support.

By Manny Garcia

Dear readers,

The Austin American-Statesman is publishing in Spanish the entire report from the special Texas House committee empaneled to investigate the tragic deaths of 19 children and their two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

We view this as a public service for the Uvalde families and the greater community, where most residents are Latino and many are more comfortable reading in Spanish. According to the most recent Census Bureau data, half of Uvalde County residents age 5 or older speak a language other than English at home.

A group of Spanish-language reporters and editors took special care to ensure the translation was culturally competent and sensitive to word usage by Mexican and Central American communities. A few words in the report do not readily translate to Spanish, however, such as "tomboy," which is a derogatory term in Spanish. We have kept those words in English in quotations.

We also are printing the report in Spanish and will be distributing copies in Uvalde and making them available free of charge.

Transparency and rigorous journalism that challenges the process are the only path to meaningful change. The Uvalde families deserve honest answers and what will be done to prevent another May 24 tragedy after a gunman walked into the school and opened fire inside two classrooms. Law enforcement officers took 73 minutes before they entered the room. Police said they killed the gunman.

The Uvalde families deserve to receive the report's information in Spanish, too.

The translation and editing is the result of a great collaboration of Spanish-speaking journalists from across the country, and in Mexico, by Teresa Frontado and Sonia Ramírez Chávez and overseen by reporter Romina Ruiz-Goiriena at USA Today.

Thank you,

Manny García

Executive Editor

Austin American-Statesman

Read full Uvalde report in Spanish

Editor’s note: Government seals and signatures may not reproduce in the translated report and appear as a triangle and exclamation point. If the embed below does not load, click here to see the PDF.

By Tony Plohetski and Chuck Lindell

UVALDE — Standing on a darkened street in front of Robb Elementary School, while some of the 21 massacre victims still lay inside, Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez spun a harrowing account of police heroism in a series of national network interviews.

“The one thing I have really got to stress and praise is our brave men and women that arrived here, went into that school knowing there was an active shooter,” Olivarez told ABC News shortly after a hearse crept behind him. “It just shows the braveness, the heroism from these law enforcement officers who went in there.”

His words helped establish a false narrative about the May 24 law enforcement response that would be amplified by officers from multiple agencies and by top public officials, from Washington and across Texas, including U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Gov. Greg Abbott: The officers who responded to the Robb Elementary shooting were heroes.

“We stand in awe of the courageous law enforcement officers, including members of our United States Border Patrol, who ran into danger at such great personal risk and saved many children's lives,” Mayorkas said May 25 in a videotaped statement that has not been updated.

Yet interviews with bystanders and video evidence from that day contradicted the heroic storyline, an analysis by the American-Statesman found.

Near the spot where Olivarez stood, hours earlier, parents, other family members and bystanders had been screaming at scores of officers outside the school, begging them to storm the classroom and rescue the children. A few tried to rush past police but were stopped. 

Adam Martinez was among them, fearing for his 8-year-old son, Zayon, as he pleaded with the assembled police officers to do something. The second grader was not injured, but the wait was agony.

“I was like, ‘Why don’t you go in?’ And they said, ‘Because we are having to deal with y’all,’” he said. “People were emotional. They were just in a state of shock or panic.”

Even so, during the ABC interview, Olivarez stayed on message: “We know that if they were not able to kill the suspect, there could have been more lives lost.”

That same night and early the next day, senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials stuck to the same narrative, sharing the same false copy-and-paste Twitter message: “Risking their own lives, these agents and other officers put themselves between the shooter and children to draw the shooter’s attention away from potential victims and save lives.”

Robb Elementary teacher Arnulfo Reyes, who had been shot by the gunman and lay sprawled on the floor, feigning death while the wait for rescue dragged on, says he found the heroic spin galling.

“I did put myself between the gunman and the children,” he told the Statesman. “If that’s what they consider a hero, then I’m a hero. They were cowards.”

The morning after the shooting, Abbott, who is running for reelection this fall, assured assembled reporters and Uvalde residents that officers had saved the day.

“It could have been worse,” Abbott, a former Texas attorney general, said while surrounded by law officers. “The reason (the shooting) was not worse was because law enforcement officials did what they do. They showed amazing purpose by running toward the gunfire with the singular purpose of trying to save lives.”

The narrative began to crumble three days later when DPS officials acknowledged that officers waited more than an hour to confront and kill the gunman, even as several children in the classrooms called 911 to beg for help.

Those 72 hours robbed many Uvalde residents of their trust in the authorities and their version of the tragic attack, said Abelardo Castillo, 76, a community activist and Uvalde resident who has gotten to know many of the parents of the 19 slain children.

“The grief can only go so far, and the anger is what has come afterwards,” he said. “It’s insulting. They were no heroes, and as time goes by, people get more angry. As they have time to process, they started realizing, ‘This is bullshit,’ and there is no denying that.”

To better understand the false narrative’s impact, the Statesman examined an array of public statements made in TV interviews, on social media and in news conferences to establish that police and government leaders repeated a familiar talking point — that police responded bravely in the face of danger.  The narrative finally collapsed in July when the Statesman published a 77-minute video of officers standing outside the classrooms where the shooting took place, taking no action.

Instead of a heroic confrontation — let alone an example of standard police training to immediately engage and stop a shooter — the footage from a hallway surveillance camera showed an initial group of responding officers retreating from outside a classroom after the 18-year-old gunman fired shots at them from behind the closed door. Joined by dozens of heavily armed officers over the next hour, they waited in a nearby hallway before a team finally breached the classroom.

No video so far shows officers putting themselves between children and the gunman in the classroom.

Even after the truth began emerging, local leaders in Uvalde clung to the notion that their officers had acted admirably, asking DPS investigators to sign on to a one-page document titled “Narrative” in which they continued to press the story of police bravery.

“The total number of persons saved by the heroes that are local law enforcement and the assisting agencies is over 500,” the document stated. “Forty minutes were not wasted but each minute was used trying to save the lives of children and teachers.”

Body camera footage shows local police breaking windows and rescuing children from other classrooms. But the document makes no mention of the fact that dozens of officers massed in the school for more than an hour without taking direct action, the Statesman found.

‘They were not heroes’ 

More than an attack on the truth, the false narrative of bravery still echoes through Uvalde, where victims' families and many residents are struggling with a lingering sense of betrayal and an erosion of trust.

The story, Martinez said, has stirred distrust of police across Uvalde. His son has been left traumatized, terrified by loud noises and suffering from nightmares. The family recently opted for virtual learning — in part because Martinez said he has lost faith that law enforcement will keep his son safe in a classroom.

“Them saying they were heroes, it is a disgrace, and I’m offended,” he said. “It is clear as day that they were not heroes. ... I don’t know how they sleep at night.” 

While law enforcement leaders were praising the bravery of responding officers, fourth grade teacher Reyes was in the hospital, recovering after being shot in his classroom. 

Warned by an explosion of gunfire in adjoining Room 112, Reyes told his students in Room 111 to hide and act as if they were asleep. Then he felt a bullet pierce his left arm and fell to the floor.

Eleven students hiding under a table behind Reyes were killed soon afterward.

After his release from the hospital this summer, Reyes said, he finally saw the Statesman video showing officers waiting in the hall for more than 70 minutes. He was distraught.

“The video speaks for itself,” he said. “It’s hard for me to explain. It infuriated me more knowing they were just on the other side of the hall.”

No public accounting

Almost four months after the shooting, there has been no full public accounting of the origin of the fictitious accounts.

Uvalde city officials, including Mayor Don McLaughlin, declined through a spokeswoman to comment on the one-page narrative document.

Border Patrol leadership did not respond to three email requests for comment.

Olivarez did not respond to a request through a DPS spokesman for comment. The DPS said through a spokesman that Olivarez was referring to the initial seven officers who entered the school's hallway and ran toward the classroom before taking gunfire.

Abbott has only said that he repeated information told to him by federal, state and local law enforcement, but more than three months after the tragedy, he has not identified which agencies or named the officials that the governor said “misled" him.

“As the governor has said ... the information he originally shared was provided during a briefing by a roomful of law enforcement and public officials,” Abbott’s office said in a statement to the Statesman. “And as the governor has also said, he is livid that he was misled about the actual response to the shooting, as different accounts were spun during the briefing.”

In his first on-camera sit-down interview since the Uvalde massacre, DPS Director Steve McCraw told the Statesman on Thursday that, starting immediately at the scene and continuing the next day during Abbott's briefing, two Uvalde officials he declined to name set forth the narrative of heroism. He said Olivarez repeated the information in the TV interviews and that DPS Deputy Director Victor Escalon did so while briefing Abbott.

McCraw said his staff mistakenly relied on local officials to provide information instead of those from his own agency. There were 91 DPS officers on the scene, second only to the Border Patrol, which had 149 officers there.

"We came away from that relatively confident that, 'Hey, OK. Lots of children were saved. Heroic action,'" McCraw said. "The only time that narrative was countered was when we got that video back and were able to review it."

"It was anything but heroic, when in fact it was an absolute disaster," he added.

The Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, the state's largest police union, declined to address the now-recognized failure by officers to storm the classroom and end the massacre. In a statement issued one week after the shooting, the union published a release that highlighted instead the conclusion of the attack.

“As a law enforcement organization, we stand behind those professionals who put an end to the assault on Robb Elementary. Without the officers who breached the door and took out the murderer, this already devastating event would have lasted longer and more children would have been lost,” the organization said.

While Abbott, DPS and Border Patrol officials have not accepted responsibility for the statements, the loudest condemnation came from a Texas House committee that investigated the shooting. “One would expect law enforcement during a briefing would be very careful to state what facts are verifiable and which ones are not,” said the panel's report, released in July.

“Uvalde itself has paid a terrible price as it has waited for truth and waded through the shaky narrative given instead," concluded the committee, whose leadership conducted a large share of its investigation behind closed doors, claiming the secrecy was necessary to ensure that witnesses spoke truthfully.

Repeated misstatements

From the start, the Robb Elementary investigation was fraught with misinformation and misstatements.

In Uvalde, DPS officials incorrectly said that the shooter entered the school through a door that a teacher had left propped open. It turned out that the door had been shut but was unlocked. 

By 7 a.m., the day after the shooting, Olivarez returned to the network airwaves to praise the team of officers who finally broke into the classroom, saying that “it just goes to show you, they were placing their own lives between the shooter and those children.”

He also told NBC’s “Today” that “we want to offer our condolences to the families as we continue to mourn with the victims … also praising the brave law enforcement, our first responders, who arrived on scene during this active shooter situation.”

By that time, two Border Patrol officials, Chief Raul Ortiz, the agency’s head, and El Paso-based regional Chief Patrol Agent Gloria I. Chavez, had tweeted messages praising agents for facing gunfire from a barricaded subject and for putting themselves between the gunman and students. They were joined by Marsha Espinosa, assistant secretary of public affairs for the Homeland Security Department.

A day after the shooting, as Abbott prepared for a news conference to be broadcast live nationally, a Uvalde police lieutenant planned to provide an account of the shooting to the governor and other federal, state and local officials before falling ill. Escalon stepped in during the closed-door meeting and then similarly relayed the account of police bravery to local and state leaders and the FBI, the Statesman reported in June.

Afterward, the group of mostly elected leaders took the stage at Uvalde High School for their first major news conference on the shooting. Abbott explained that the gunman had shot his grandmother before driving her pickup near the campus. Then Abbott told the public, “It is a fact that because of their quick response, getting on the scene, being able to respond to the gunman and eliminate the gunman, they were able to save lives.”

During the same news conference, McCraw, the DPS chief, presented a timeline of the police response and said that as the gunman approached the school, “there was a brave consolidated independent school district resource officer who approached him, engaged him, and at the time gunfire was not exchanged.”

No officer confronted the gunman before he entered Robb Elementary and shot his way into the classroom, officers later acknowledged and the 77-minute video obtained by the Statesman shows.

“They did contain him in the classroom, and they put the tactical stack together in a very orderly way and breached,” McCraw said.

But later that day, investigators who weren’t on the scene began realizing the narrative of heroism didn’t match reality as more social media videos emerged showing frantic parents begging officers to act during the shooting and as Texas Rangers began reviewing the Robb Elementary hallway footage.

McCraw said high-ranking staff alerted him — "wait a minute" — and he began reviewing the evidence.

"It was shock," he said. "How could you not be shocked. It was unbelievable."

The next morning, May 26, the Statesman reported that the Rangers were expanding their investigation to include the law enforcement response. 

In an attempt to begin correcting the record, DPS leaders decided that Escalon should address the mounting questions about the police performance. At a news conference with hundreds of reporters on the street in front of Robb Elementary two days after the shooting, new statements only served to deepen the confusion.

“There is some information, as of Tuesday, I want to clear up, that we want to clear up, that has been pushed out,” Escalon said. “There’s a lot going on. It is a complex situation.”

Reporters began hammering Escalon with questions about the response as parents of the victims, bystanders and Robb teachers stood by.

“Should they have gone in faster?” one asked.

“That’s a difficult question,” Escalon responded. “Our job is to report the facts, and later we can answer those questions. I don’t have enough information to answer that question just yet.”

Uvalde officials furious over portrayals

By the next morning, three days after the massacre, McCraw took to the same podium and began to reveal a wrenching timeline in which teachers and students called 911 multiple times asking for help and begging for officers to enter the classrooms. McCraw said for the first time that the on-scene commander, school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, treated what happened as a barricaded subject situation instead of an active shooter — a flawed judgment call that delayed classroom entry.

McCraw, who provided a timeline based on the 77-minute video of law enforcement’s failure to immediately act, didn't mention that dozens of heavily armed officers crowded into the hallway at Robb Elementary without breaching the classroom and killing the gunman.

“There were plenty of officers to do what needed to be done. Of course, it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision,” he said.

Behind the scenes, a handful of law enforcement investigators involved in the case in Uvalde were furious, according to interviews with the Statesman. Some felt as though McCraw had scapegoated their officers by excluding that 91 DPS responders at Robb also failed to quickly end the attack. Those familiar with their concerns spoke on background to the Statesman because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.

The next week, Abbott’s office, in an attempt to rebuild trust and cooperation, set up a meeting with DPS and Uvalde leaders, including McLaughlin, County Judge Bill Mitchell and District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee. Several officials in the meeting declined to say who provided the one-page “narrative” document that lacked the full truth of what happened.

Over the next several weeks, in repeated public statements, including to a state Senate investigative committee, McCraw and others continued to largely focus blame on Uvalde officials, including Arredondo. McCraw told the Senate panel in a June 21 Capitol hearing that the overall police response was an “abject failure.”

One month later, as the pressure mounted over police response and worried parents prepared for their children to return to school, McCraw clarified that DPS officers are expected to engage any future school shooters and “will be authorized to overcome any delay to neutralizing an attacker.”

On July 12, the Statesman published the entire security video and body camera footage that showed how the gunman entered the school unchallenged, shot his way into the classroom and opened fire, and how responding officers followed by scores of heavily armed backup officers stood in the hallway but waited 77 minutes before breaching the classroom.

The video, published with news partner KVUE-TV, impeached the storyline that police responded quickly and heroically and put themselves between the shooter and schoolchildren.

On Sept. 6, DPS officials said five officers who responded to the school shooting were referred to the agency's inspector general for possible disciplinary action as a result of the delay in confronting the gunman. Two of the five were suspended with pay.

On the day the Uvalde school district fired Arredondo in August, his attorney released a 17-page statement, still praising his performance.

“Chief Arredondo was brave, led other officers in saving lives, and took all reasonable actions to prevent further injuries or loss of life,” attorney George Hyde said. Arredondo “never retreated, he stayed in the hallway, fully engaged in working the problem of getting the door open and evacuating those accessible out of harm’s way.”

Legacy of the heroism tale

The full truth of how police responded the day of the shooting still is not known. The Statesman is part of a coalition of media outlets suing the DPS to require that the agency release records such as 911 calls, officer statements and video footage. No date has been set for a hearing.

As that process unfolds, Cedric Alexander, who worked in high-ranking law enforcement posts in Rochester, N.Y., and DeKalb County, Ga., and served as president of the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Executives and was on President Barack Obama’s task force on 21st century policing, said erroneous and incomplete information tarnishes public trust in policing.

“When you start pronouncing that heroism takes place and then millions of people hear children being killed behind a door and dozens of officers doing nothing, how do you expect the American people not to feel the way that they do?” said Alexander, who was recently appointed Minneapolis’ first community safety commissioner.

“Lesson learned here, before we start high-fiving and patting ourselves on the back, we need to understand what the facts are,” he said.

Tina Quintanilla-Taylor, a mother of two whose daughter attended Robb Elementary, said she is not sure if her family will ever trust police again. 

Her son used to love officers, she said, but he now cowers when he sees them. She said she will never understand the initial reports of law enforcement bravery, especially knowing that they stood in the hall for more than an hour.

“For anyone who was out there that day, it is a slap in the face,” she said, referring to the hero narrative. “They did not fulfill their promise to serve and protect.”

By Caroline Ghisolfi

Newsrooms across the country are waiting on the Texas attorney general’s office to decide if records that could reveal crucial information about law enforcement’s botched response to the Uvalde school shooting should be released. 

But if the office's track record with such cases is any indication, there could be little chance that many of the records will be released any time soon.

An American-Statesman investigation into the agency's handling of more than 240,000 public records disputes over Attorney General Ken Paxton's nearly eight-year tenure reveals that his office has increasingly blocked the disclosure of public records.

The Open Records Division of the attorney general's office has ruled against disclosure of public records in half of the 18,000 cases this year, a 10% increase from 2015, Paxton's first year in office.

The difference is even starker for requests for opinions originating from the Texas Department of Public Safety. In 2015, 2016 and 2017, the attorney general's office ruled against disclosure in less than half of all cases in which the DPS sought to withhold information and requested an attorney general opinion. This year, the attorney general's office has sided with the DPS in 80% of the 388 cases in which agency officials have asked for an opinion because they did not want to release public records.

“It’s a mindset that’s being promoted,” said James Hemphill, a Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas board member who assists the Statesman with legal matters. While not legally binding, these attorney general opinions set dangerous precedents that are prompting “more governmental bodies to claim exemptions (from the disclosure of public information) and the attorney general’s office to withhold more records.”

The attorney general's office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In the aftermath of the Robb Elementary School shooting, the mounting number of inconsistencies in the official timeline of events and growing questions about who is to blame for the decision to wait more than an hour to stop the shooter prompted newsrooms to send hundreds of public records requests to state and local agencies in a search for answers. But government officials are working to block the release of information. 

Many requests were met with outright denials or ignored, while some agencies — including the city of Uvalde, the DPS, the governor's office and the Uvalde school district — turned to the Texas attorney general’s office for opinions.

The hallway video that captured the long delay in confronting the gunman, disclosed to the Statesman and KVUE and published Tuesday, was one of several files the Statesman requested from the Uvalde school district in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. On Saturday, the district's lawyer notified the Statesman that it will request an opinion from the attorney general's office seeking to withhold some of the requested files.

Communications between law enforcement officers and 911 call transcripts — some of the records the Statesman requested — are all in theory public records unless officials can successfully argue that they fit into one of the categories of exempt information in the Texas Public Information Act.

It’s up to the attorney general to decide whether their arguments are valid or not — a decision that is meant to balance the public’s right to know against officers', criminals' and victims’ other rights, such as the right to privacy and personal safety.

The Statesman review of the agency's handling of requests for opinions as the final arbiter of public records disputes found that the share of released records has declined across nearly every type of requested information, from school and college to public utility and transportation records, during Paxton's tenure.

In addition to the DPS, police and sheriff’s departments also tend to win more public records disputes now than they did in the past. The share of rulings keeping most or all records private grew by more than 10% between 2015 and 2022. 

This trend coincides with an increase in the overall number of requests for opinions filed with the attorney general’s office. The office processed over 36,000 requests in 2021, almost 13,000 more than it did in 2015.

New categories of exemptions

But Hemphill said the rise in denials is not just a function of volume. It is partly the result of recent legislation exempting new categories of public information from disclosure. 

“The Legislature has become more active in finding exemptions … (and) based on anecdotal knowledge, I would say (exemptions) are being cited more frequently,” he said. “These exemptions tend to have their genesis in some interest group who wishes to keep certain information secret. (The groups) work with legislators to draft bills and introduce them.” 

When Paxton first took office, the Texas Government Code exempted from disclosure 60 different categories of information, including sensitive personal details such as Social Security numbers and such law enforcement records as documents that could interfere with prosecution. 

This year, there are 72 categories of exemptions, and government agencies are taking note. 

Families demanding answers

In its letter to the attorney general, the city of Uvalde cited 52 different exemptions. They include commonly cited reasons related to police investigations, open litigation, invasion of privacy and client-attorney privilege. 

But they also include a legal loophole known as the dead suspect loophole barring the release of information about crimes in which no one is convicted. The exemption was originally designed to protect people who are wrongfully accused. Only recently has it been used to deny public records when a suspect dies on the scene or in custody. 

Some of the requested exemptions are rarely granted, according to Hemphill, such as the city’s claim that the arrest records from that day — a category of information that is notoriously public — are “highly embarrassing.” Hemphill also said other requests are overly vague: The city's letter states that releasing information about the shooting would cause “emotional (or) mental distress” but doesn’t say to whom. 

Those most emotionally involved in the incident, the family members of the victims, are advocating for the release of information, according to state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde and has been vocal about his frustration with officials’ reluctance to provide information.

“Every one of those family members that I have talked to … want to get the information as to what went wrong that day with their children,” he said. 

Late last month, Gutierrez filed a lawsuit against the DPS after the department failed to respond to his requests for records within the 10 business days required by law. 

Deflecting attention?

On June 9, the DPS requested an opinion from the attorney general addressing over 30 public records requests, including the Statesman’s inquiry about law enforcement’s radio transmissions from the day of the shooting. 

The DPS letter cited the department’s active investigation into the shooting and claimed that the release of records would provide “criminals with invaluable information concerning Department techniques,” a narrative that the DPS and Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee have been using to pressure local authorities to shield records from the public eye, according to email correspondence produced by Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin at a City Council meeting last month. 

Gutierrez believes these are just excuses in a larger effort to deflect attention away from the facts and the structural failures that prevented police from responding promptly on the scene, such as Uvalde’s dysfunctional radio transmission network. 

“It’s preposterous for these guys to spend $50 million in ballistic shields,” Gutierrez said, referencing the biggest ticket item in a $105.5 million initiative announced by the state's top leaders to fund school safety and mental health, “when they have been asked for the last seven years to fix the radios in rural Texas in this community … and they refuse to do so.”

The governor's office also requested exemption from the release of emails and other communications exchanged with the DPS in the shooting's aftermath on the grounds that they interfere with deliberative process privilege, a part of Texas public information law that exempts documents revealing the process by which a government entity arrives at a public statement, such as informal drafts.

The privilege is meant to allow government employees to freely communicate about what should or shouldn't be included in public communications. It is supposed to only cover advice, recommendations and opinions, while granting the release of factual information. But the governor's office claims that facts are too "inextricably intertwined" with opinions to be released — an excuse Hemphill said is misused far too often.

"I’ve never seen an example of that where the agency can't separate factual information from advice. I’m very skeptical about that principle applying to anything but the very rare case," he said. "But we are unable to evaluate whether that’s true or not because we can’t see the information. We have to rely on the attorney general’s office."

Bracing for a fight

The attorney general’s office has to decide if the exemptions cited by the city of Uvalde, the DPS and the governor's office justify withholding public information within 45 days from receiving their letters — by Aug. 15 for the DPS and Aug. 22 for the city. 

The decisions could set a crucial precedent, according to Hemphill. 

“If this information is successfully withheld and, God forbid, there’s a similar incident in a different location in Texas, the governmental bodies are going to look at what happened in Uvalde and say, ‘Well, if they could withhold it, so can we,’” he said.  

In the meantime, newsrooms are bracing for a fight. 

On June 21, the Statesman joined a coalition of more than 50 local and national media organizations working to ensure that the facts of May 24 come to light and government agencies are held accountable. 

The coalition sent a letter to the attorney general's office responding to the exemptions cited by government agencies involved in the shooting.

In a recent letter to McLaughlin, the coalition also called on the mayor to demand “a full accounting of the tragic events at Robb Elementary. The victims and their families deserve an accurate and complete picture about what occurred that day.”

A damning state legislative report released Sunday describes pervasive failures to prevent or effectively respond to the Uvalde school massacre, but it fails to drive home a key point: If a disturbed 18-year-old had been unable to buy a powerful AR-15-style rifle, the slaughter of innocent children and teachers might not have happened.

The 77-page report by the Texas House Investigative Committee on the Robb Elementary Shooting gives a chilling and detailed account of the circumstances leading up to the horrific day of the shooting. It reveals that the attacker’s family noticed alarming changes in the young shooter's behavior, including violent threats, but failed to notify authorities or try to get him help. It describes how school faculty failed to follow security policy by habitually leaving doors unlocked or propping them open for the sake of convenience. And the report details how armed police ignored their active shooter training and failed to stop the gunman sooner.

Republicans and the gun lobby have long claimed that a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun, but there were 375 "good guys" with guns at Robb Elementary who failed to stop an 18-year-old with a more powerful AR-15-style rifle. Instead, several spent 70 minutes pacing and waiting in hallways outside the classrooms where the shooter had executed schoolchildren and their teachers. Finally, a U.S. Border Patrol officer went in and killed the gunman.

These failures are both heartbreaking and infuriating to consider, but they aren’t entirely new. We’ve seen similar negligence in the nightmarish wave of mass shootings across our nation. While the House investigative committee’s report shines a powerful light on failures that led to the Uvalde shooting, it gives only brief reference to the easy availability of the AR-15-style rifle, ammunition and magazines that enabled the shooter to kill and maim his victims in mere minutes. 

"There was no legal impediment to the attacker buying two AR-15-style rifles, 60 magazines, and over 2,000 rounds ofammunition when he turned 18," the report's conclusion says. "The ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) was not required to notify the local sheriff of the multiple purchases."

Rep. Joe Moody, an El Paso Democrat and a member of the committee that conducted the investigation, noted the shooter was unable to buy a gun before he was 18 and failed to convince others to buy one for him.

"I think this is actually a concrete example of the laws we have working, but not being sufficient," Moody told our editorial board. "He tried to get these weapons before he was 18 and was unable to. If the law had been 21, I'm fairly certain he wouldn't have been able to acquire them until he would be 21."

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde and who has called for reinstatement of the federal assault weapons ban, agreed.

"This doesn't happen if we don't have these types of weapons in the hands of this18-year-old,” Gutierrez told us.

Despite some police organizations' calls to limit the sale of assault weapons, Republicans in Congress refuse to consider banning them, and most Republicans in the Texas Legislature oppose raising the age to purchase guns to 21. This despite wave after wave of mass shootings and polls showing most Americans favor stricter gun control.

Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Lubbock Republican who led the legislative investigation into the Uvalde shooting, told reporters Sunday that it was premature to discuss additional gun control measures.

At some point, Burrows said, policymakers would share their opinions with the committee and others about the steps needed to prevent another Uvalde, "but right now, we’re gonna let the report speak for itself and focus on the facts that were found in there.”

Yes, let the facts speak. They tell us and Burrows, Gov. Greg Abbott and any other politician willing to listen that if we are to end the gun violence terrorizing our state and nation, we must first admit we can't do it without addressing the root of the problem: the ease with which some can get their hands on weapons capable of killing so many innocent people in so little time.

By Bridget Grumet

Just three hours after gunfire once again pierced the bodies of young people in Uvalde — before we knew the age of the three victims and the severity of their injuries, before we knew who fired a gun and how that weapon reached their hands, before we knew what exactly prompted the spray of bullets at a park where kids were playing and families were picnicking at 5:30 p.m. Thursday — Gov. Greg Abbott wanted to make sure everyone knew one thing.

This was all about gangs.

“I was outraged to learn that gang violence has endangered the Uvalde community and innocent Texans this evening,” Abbott said in a statement Thursday night, vowing to launch anti-gang efforts and patrol gang hot spots because gang violence cannot be tolerated.

Indeed, the word “gang” appeared once in the headline and seven times in the body of Abbott’s press release.

“Shooting” appeared twice.

No mention of the words “gun” or “firearm.”

Let’s set aside Abbott’s tone of certitude at a time when the Texas Department of Public Safety was carefully calling the shooting at Uvalde's Memorial Park a “suspected gang related shooting” (emphasis mine) and noting that information was “preliminary.” (I mean, it’s not like officials have ever been wrong in their early reports about a shooting.)

Let’s talk about the implications of Abbott aggressively spinning the latest Uvalde shooting as “gang violence.” Without making the slightest acknowledgment that the incident Thursday rattled a town still reeling from the horrific school shooting in May at Robb Elementary, Abbott did everything in his power to separate the two.

“Gang violence” defines the danger without any discussion of guns, which is of course how Abbott wants to compartmentalize the issue.

“Gang violence” suggests actions by lawless people who will get weapons anyway, so why bother passing more laws?

“Gang violence” conjures images of people of color, signaling to Abbott’s majority-white base that this shooting is someone else’s problem.

“He’s trying to scare Texans and place them against one another in terms of the racial divide, which is really sad,” said Rodolfo Rosales Jr., the Texas director for the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC.

“He’s playing with semantics,” Rosales continued. “He’s trying to pull it back and say, ‘It’s gangs,’ when in reality, the fact these gangs in little old Uvalde have access to guns is what’s irresponsible.”

Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The shooting Thursday could very well involve gangs, but that shouldn’t mean we simply step up patrols, adding to the intense policing of a community where the schools are now surrounded by 8-foot-high fencing and monitored by state troopers. If people who should not have guns are nonetheless getting them, what can our state do about that?

Texas could close the so-called gun show loophole and require background checks for private gun sales, something Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick briefly supported in 2019 before retreating on the issue.

Texas could crack down on “straw purchases” by making it a crime for someone to sell or transfer a firearm to a person they know or suspect is not allowed to buy a gun. (Congress recently beefed up federal law on this front.) Investigators could shut down and prosecute straw purchasers by tracking down the sources of guns used in crimes.

Beyond that, Texas lawmakers could revive the common-sense requirement that people carrying a gun in public must first undergo training and a background check to get a license to carry. The Republican-led Legislature dissolved the permit requirement last year over the objections of police chiefs who said permitless carry would make officers’ jobs harder and communities less safe.

Public safety advocates also point to the need to address community violence in a more comprehensive way, by looking to improve access to health care, education and economic opportunity.

Nicole Golden, executive director of Texas Gun Sense, said some other states have successful community violence intervention programs, which can include outreach efforts by trained educators who have experienced violence and can help steer others toward a better path. She and other advocates urged the Legislature last year to put funds toward such programming. Lawmakers declined to do so.

“It’s a concern when we hear this minimizing language, that it’s just gang violence,” Golden told me Friday. “These are the kind of shootings that often go unnoticed on a daily basis by our national media. They don’t grab those national headlines. But they deserve our attention and support in targeted ways, especially when we know there are these proven strategies that work.”

Texans in general — and the anguished residents of Uvalde in particular — deserve a full and fair-minded discussion about options to make communities safer. Instead, we have a governor who says the problem is gangs, not guns; the solution is more police, not better policies.

We'll just ignore the fact that firearm-related injuries are the leading cause of death for kids in America.

Nothing to see here.

Grumet is the Statesman’s Metro columnist. Her column, ATX in Context, contains her opinions. Share yours via email at [email protected] or via Twitter at @bgrumet. Find her previous work at statesman.com/news/columns

By John C. Moritz

Facing the largest audience of the 2022 campaign, Gov. Greg Abbott sought to show he shared the horror and sorrow of the families in Uvalde, whose lives were forever scarred by the May 24 mass shooting that killed 19 elementary school children and their two teachers.

"I can feel their pain,” Abbott said during the Sept. 30 gubernatorial debate at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, which was aired or streamed to every corner of the state.

But in nearly the same breath, the two-term Republican told those families that he would not grant their pleas to make 21 the minimum age to purchase combat-style rifles like the one used by the 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde.

“We want to end school shootings, but we cannot do that by making false promises," Abbott said, asserting that the law the families are seeking would not pass constitutional muster even though PolitiFact had found flaws in that statement.

As routine as mass shootings have become in the Lone Star State, so have Abbott’s responses following massacres during his time as governor that together left 90 Texans dead, and dozens of others wounded.

Through the tears, the devastating losses and innocent lives lost, Abbott’s mass shooting response playbook has become well practiced. He blames “madmen” for the carnage. For Abbott, any conversation centered on addressing Texas’ record of easy access to assault weapons has been a non-starter.

He has rebuffed pleas for special sessions on gun violence yet ordered lawmakers back to Austin for issues ranging from rewriting election laws to passing measures targeting transgender people.

During his two terms as governor, Abbott has witnessed six mass shootings in Texas shopping centers, churches, and schools, has not used his executive powers to champion ways to reduce access to firearms. This is in stark contrast to how he has wielded his political clout on such issues as abortion, immigration and tighter election rules.

Those who tuned in to the Sept. 30 debate got a virtual front row seat to that strategy in action.

“We need to get to the bottom of what is really ailing our communities, and that is the mental health that is leading people to engage in school shootings,” Abbott said on the debate stage he shared with Democratic opponent Beto O'Rourke, echoing what the governor said one day after the massacre in Uvalde. To bolster the point, Abbott said the state has added billions of dollars for mental health programs since 2017, though Texas continues to rank near the bottom when it comes to access to mental health care.

But the Uvalde massacre, which came 5½ months before what is shaping up as Abbott's toughest political fight, has upended the governor's strategy for crisis in no small part due to missteps and his own misstatements.

Uvalde families, many of whom now actively campaign for O'Rourke, promise political consequences for inaction on the issue of assault-style weapons.

"Gov. Abbott, if you don't meet our demands (for stricter gun laws), then I suggest you prepare yourself, because we will vote you out," Veronica Mata, whose 10-year-old daughter, Tess Marie Mata, was killed at Robb Elementary School, said at a Capitol rally in late August.

How Uvalde has become Abbott's millstone

Despite the tearful pleas from the Uvalde families, Abbott has remained unwilling to consider any restrictions on gun purchases. Instead, the governor has tried to direct attention toward his strong-suit issues: immigration, crime, fentanyl and the economy.

"We will be involved with the city of Uvalde for years," he said during a news conference in mid-July. "I made that clear from the very beginning, and we will live up to that."

But since May 24, Uvalde has come to represent the governor’s greatest vulnerability in a political career that features an unbroken string of victories in statewide elections dating back to the 1990s.

The burden has been made heavier by Abbott’s own actions. At the same news conference in Uvalde where he made the reference to mental health, Abbott praised what he called the courage and quick response of the scores of law enforcement officials who raced to Robb Elementary upon hearing the first reports of gunfire.

The governor at that first news conference said the gunman exhibited "no meaningful forewarning of this crime." But a July report by a special Texas House committee tasked with investigating all aspects of the massacre described the gunman in the months leading up to the attack as "lonely and depressed, constantly teased by friends who called him a 'school shooter.'"

"The attacker began to demonstrate interest in gore and violent sex, watching and sometimes sharing gruesome videos and images of suicides, beheadings, accidents, and the like, as well as sending unexpected explicit messages to others online," the report states.

Abbott's storyline completely unraveled when the American-Statesman published on July 12 an exclusive video that showed officers waited 77 minutes to confront and kill the gunman. Abbott has blamed his misstatement on inaccurate reports he received in closed-door briefings from law enforcement and said he was “livid” over being in put in the position of misleading the public.

As the false tale of police heroism was crumbling, news organizations revealed that the governor, after learning of the carnage in Uvalde, kept to his reelection campaign schedule on the day of the shooting and attended a political fundraiser in Huntsville. He remained at the private event for about three hours before traveling to Uvalde the next day, according to later reports.

The same day he made the "livid" remark, the National Rifle Association held its convention in Houston. The nation's premier gun lobby rejected calls to postpone the gathering out of respect for the still-grieving community of Uvalde. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick opted to cancel his appearance. Former President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, went ahead with their plans to speak.

Abbott took a third approach: He opted out of appearing in person and went to Uvalde instead. But he sent a video message urging NRA members to "pray for those in Uvalde." And he added that "thousands of laws on the books" regulating firearms "have not stopped madmen from carrying out evil acts."

And when Abbott followed President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden to lay flowers at what became a memorial garden outside Robb Elementary, the Democratic president was met with cheers and the Republican governor was the target of boos and catcalls.

Abbott spoke to the USA Today Network last month about the need for accountability in the Uvalde shooting response, but he declined a follow-up interview for this story.

Texas and mental health

Abbott said in the debate that he has signed legislation that boosted funding for state mental health programs by $25 billion over the past five years. However, the 103-year-old nonprofit Mental Health America had rated Texas 44th among the states for the overall prevalence of mental illness and the ability to access care. For the prevalence of mental illness and the ability to access care among youth, Texas' ranking was 41st.

"In Texas, nearly three-quarters of youth with major depression did not receive mental health treatment," the organization said in its October 2021 report.

Three and a half weeks before Abbott first went to Uvalde and decried what he called "a problem with mental health illness" in that South Texas community, the governor's office announced it was shifting $210.7 million from the state Health and Human Services Commission to cover a shortfall in his border security initiative called Operation Lone Star.

The health commission oversees state mental health programs. Agency officials said the diverted money was not earmarked for any specific program and that funding from the pandemic-related federal CARES Act was available to cover any shortfalls.

Abbott's initiatives after Uvalde

Two days after the Statesman and KVUE jointly published security video showing law enforcement inaction in a Robb Elementary hallway as the mass shooting unfolded, and three days before the release of the House committee's report on the law enforcement response, Abbott scheduled a news conference in Houston.

But his news conference had nothing to do with Uvalde. Instead, he highlighted the dangers posed by the illegal cross-border importation of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. The message of the state-paid event dovetailed with Abbott's oft-stated campaign message of lax border security by the Biden administration. Still, reporters who attended steered their questions back to Uvalde, which dominated the event's headlines.

But Abbott pushes back at any suggestions that he’d like to put Uvalde in the rearview mirror. His official website contains numerous examples of state resources that have been sent to the community since the shooting:

• $5 million as an "initial investment" in a Uvalde resiliency center to meet the community's mental health needs, including psychological first aid and crisis counseling for residents and first responders.
• $1.2 million for school counseling and crisis intervention programs.
• 30 officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety to help provide security for the Uvalde school district during the 2022-23 school year.
• $105 million for school safety initiatives statewide, nearly half of it to purchase bulletproof shields for police officers.
• Private meetings with Abbott and Uvalde families and community members who had agreed to participate "to ensure they are receiving all the resources and support needed to heal," an aide told news outlets.

Mary Beth Fisk, the resiliency center's executive director, said the licensed counselors and therapists have provided a range of services, from helping with job placement to coping with grief to about 1,800 Uvalde residents, about half of them younger than 18. Citing privacy concerns, she declined to say if survivors of the shooting were among those served.

Promises of accountability, but who should be held to account?

Several of the victims' family members, many of whom say they had not been politically active in the past, have been withering in their criticism of the governor. Their anger has centered not only on his own opposition to stricter laws on gun ownership,but on his decision to not convene a special session of the Legislature, where the 150 House members and 31 senators might find common ground on one of the thorniest issues they could face.

"Here we are 19 weeks since our lives were completely destroyed by gun violence, and not a single effort has been made by our current governor to prevent this from ever happening again," said Marissa Lozano, sister of Irma Garcia, one of the two Robb Elementary teachers who was shot to death. "Greg Abbott has refused to take action and has declined to even consider our valid concerns on sensible gun laws. Greg Abbott has abandoned us."

The comments came during an emotionally charged Oct. 8 news conference organized by the Texas Democratic Party where more than a dozen community members spoke. And it came just five weeks before Election Day as polls continued to show Abbott with a steady lead over O'Rourke.

The Abbott campaign said afterward that it "would not politicize this tragedy."

Abbott, in a late September interview with the USA Today Network and again on the debate stage, promised accountability for the officers who hesitated to confront the gunman and for the incorrect early accounts about the shooting.

"All Texans — people in Uvalde, people in Texas, people across the country — they will know exactly what happened," he said in the interview.

Asked who should be held to account for the myriad missteps, the governor was less direct.

"There's multiple levels of accountability," he said. "The primary personal overall accountability was the incident commander, and the incident commander was the police chief of the Uvalde ISD police. For one. He did not use the appropriate protocol. But for another, it was whether him or his team that created a narrative that was very different (from) what reality was."

Many members of the Uvalde community and the state senator who represents the region have called for public information related to the shooting and the police response to be released.

Abbott told the USA Today Network "there's a need for speed" in getting the information out, but so far the DPS chief has deferred to the Uvalde County district attorney's request that it be kept sealed.

One person who has been held to account, Pete Arredondo, was fired as the school district's police chief by the Uvalde school board Aug. 24. Later, when CNN reported that a DPS officer under investigation for her role in the shooting response had been hired by the district's police department, district officials fired her and suspended the force.

During the debate, Abbott was asked, "Who misled you, and will they be held accountable?" He responded, "Everyone in that briefing room" and said full accountability would come "once all the facts become clear."

Jesse Rizo, whose 9-year-old niece, Jackie Cazares, was among those killed, said Abbott is using the former school district police chief and others to deflect what should be his own accountability.

"He faults people who gave him the information," Rizo said. "Mr. Abbott, you have the resources. You could have simply verified the information before you spoke."

An experienced 'consoler-in-chief'

By the time he took his place on the stage of the Uvalde High School auditorium, where he wore a military-style navy blue button-down shirt with the seal of his office above his left breast pocket, the governor of Texas was well-practiced in the role of the state's consoler-in-chief. Less than two years into his first term, Abbott was called to comfort a grieving Dallas community after a sniper shot 11 officers from several jurisdictions and killed five of them.

The officers who were shot, along with dozens of others on an evening in July 2016, were helping protect throngs of demonstrators during a march protesting recent shootings of Black men by law enforcement nationwide. Abbott praised the courage and heroism of all the police officers in Dallas that night.

Less than a year and a half later, the governor was in the tiny South Texas town of Sutherland Springs, where a man with a military-style weapon had gunned down more than two dozen people attending a Sunday church service. The gunman was fired upon by another man who used his own military-style rifle to help stop the attack. And Abbott praised the courage and heroism of an otherwise ordinary Texan.

There were more mass shootings: 10 dead in Santa Fe High School near Galveston on May 18, 2018; 23 dead and 23 others wounded at an El Paso shopping center on Aug. 3, 2019. Less than a month later, a shooting rampage across the Midland-Odessa area took seven innocent lives and wounded two dozen others.

The attacks drew national attention, and the governor received nearly universal high marks for his compassion and for his promise to address the underlying causes of the violence. He assembled roundtable panels that included advocates on all sides of the gun debate, law enforcement experts, educators and mental health professionals.

Although the immediate post-Uvalde response started out like the others, it veered off course in a hurry. O'Rourke, who had been on defense on the issue of guns since entering the governor's race because of his 2019 "hell, yes" promise to confiscate assault-style rifles, went to Uvalde the day after the shooting and interrupted the governor's remarks in the high school auditorium.

“This is on you. This was totally predictable,” O’Rourke shouted at Abbott, calling out the governor's unwillingness to restrict assault-rifle sales even after so many mass shootings in Texas.

At the time, many observers — including Uvalde's mayor, who called O'Rourke "a sick son of a bitch" — denounced the Democrat's ploy as a tone-deaf political blunder that only worsened the community's anguish. But because of the botched law enforcement response to the shooting and the lingering frustration over what many see as a lack of accountability from Abbott on down to the lowest-ranking officer on the scene, the aftermath of Uvalde has played out far differently from any of the other Texas tragedies on the governor's watch.

Gun laws vs. gun rights

Abbott anchored his "false promises" response to the raise-the-age question in part on an August ruling by a federal judge that struck down Texas' law limiting the sale of handguns to people under 21.

PolitiFact Texas examined the claim, looking into other cases Abbott had cited earlier, and found flaws in his reasoning that it would be unconstitutional to raise the age. The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on whether age restrictions can be set when it comes to purchasing the type of weapon used in Uvalde. "Mostly False" is how PolitiFact described Abbott's statement.

The Uvalde shooter purchased two assault-style rifles shortly after his 18th birthday and had been rebuffed in efforts to make the purchases before reaching that age.

Not only has opposing limits on gun rights been a hallmark of Abbott's tenure in office, so has expanding them. Since becoming governor in 2015, he has signed into law 14 bills that have added to — in some cases dramatically — the rights of Texans to arm themselves in public.

Among the new laws were removing the restrictions that handguns be concealed when carried; allowing the carrying of concealed handguns in dorms, classrooms and other buildings at public universities and colleges; dropping the prohibition against handguns in houses of worship; and eliminating the requirement that handgun owners be trained and licensed before being allowed to carry the guns in public.

The Legislature passed the unlicensed carry bill in 2021 over the objections of several law enforcement organizations on grounds that it would make Texas less safe. Still, at least one of those organizations — the Texas Municipal Police Association — has endorsed Abbott's reelection.

Six of the laws loosening gun restrictions were passed in 2019, the first time the Legislature convened after the Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe, El Paso and Midland-Odessa shootings. Advocates of such measures as red flag laws, raising the age limit to purchase assault-style rifles and ending the loopholes that allow gun buyers to bypass background check laws had gone into the session hoping that the carnage of 2017 and 2018 would ease the gun lobby's hold on Texas' Republican leadership.

Gun rights activists were determined to tighten it. Even as the roundtable established after the massacre in El Paso was meeting behind closed doors in the Capitol, armed representatives of the Texas chapter of the Gun Owners Association of America were demonstrating outside warning that they would resist any efforts to roll back Second Amendment rights.

They needn't have worried.

Brett Cross, the uncle and legal guardian of 10-year-old Uvalde victim Uziyah Garcia, protested outside the Uvalde school district headquarters for 10 straight days and again outside the Governor's Mansion, has been brutal in news interviews and on social media in his criticism of Abbott's inaction on military-style weapons.

Four months after the massacre, Cross posted his frustration in a series of tweets.

"It’s been 4 months. And nothings changed. Nobody is being held accountable. Nothing has been done," Cross wrote. "Our kids deserve better. We deserve better."

John C. Moritz covers Texas government and politics for the USA Today Network in Austin. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @JohnnieMo.

By Niki Griswold

UVALDE — You can still see the bullet fragments in 11-year-old Miah Cerrillo’s left shoulder.

The size of a small coin, the wound could be scar tissue or a birthmark, if not for the small, dark spots just under the surface.

They are also embedded in her back, where, especially on her left side, they still cause her pain. Where the bullet fragments struck her on the sides of her head, the paths they carved burned away some of her hair. Miah loves her hair.

Those little pieces of metal — which her mom says that doctors hope will eventually make their own way out of her skin — are physical reminders of the day that still haunts her and so many other people in her hometown of Uvalde. 

Miah was in her fourth grade classroom at Robb Elementary School on May 24, when an 18-year-old wielding a semi-automatic rifle burst through the door and killed 19 students, many of them Miah’s friends, and her two teachers. She survived by covering herself in a classmate’s blood and playing dead.

The massacre, the worst school shooting in Texas history, shocked and devastated the tight-knit community of just over 15,000, where it seems everyone knows someone directly touched by the tragedy. Uvalde school Superintendent Hal Harrell announced in June that no students will be returning to Robb Elementary, which eventually will be demolished and rebuilt. All Robb students will instead be funneled to other elementary schools in the district. 

But when students return to classrooms on Tuesday, Miah, still experiencing profound emotional and mental trauma, will not be among them. Instead, she will be attending school virtually, which school officials announced this summer would be an option for the upcoming school year. As of a week before the start of classes, the district said 136 students had enrolled in the virtual academy.

But even those who are returning to classrooms, and their parents, are wracked with fear that a shooting could happen again. Children of all ages in Uvalde suffer from nightmares, anxiety and depression, according to multiple interviews in Uvalde last week.

District officials delayed the start of school to give more time to add security features such as improving locks on doors, adding security cameras and fencing, and having additional patrols. But a week before classes were set to begin, Harrell told parents that some of the safety improvements won't be done in time for the first day of classes, including the installation of additional security cameras and securing school vestibules and entrances. The gunman hopped over a fence on the Robb Elementary campus before entering through an unlocked door.

Some parents are choosing to send their children to neighboring districts or enroll them in private school, saying they can't trust the district to keep their children safe. The school board fired district Police Chief Pete Arredondo last month after Arredondo was singled out by state officials for his role in the bungled police response to the shooting. Nearly 400 officers from more than a dozen departments, some of them heavily armed and carrying shields, rushed to the school. But for reasons that are still not fully understood, officers waited 77 minutes after first arriving to confront and kill the gunman, even as kids inside, including Miah, called 911 pleading for help.

Parents and students have spent the summer working to hold school district leaders, law enforcement officials and politicians accountable, calling for safer schools, more mental health resources, the resignation of top officials and gun safety measures.

But in spite of their advocacy, officials responsible for the police response have pointed fingers at one another and Gov. Greg Abbott has ignored pleas to reconvene the Legislature to tackle gun violence. Now, the ritual of a school year starting anew, which had been a moment of joy and hope in years past, is dredging up the painful memories of the shooting and exposing wounds that still feel raw. 

'Miah is not the same'

Sitting in a local Starbucks on a recent afternoon, Miah was quiet, reserved, her shoulders slightly tensed, her curly hair pulled back into a ponytail, and her glasses dotted by the raindrops of a passing storm. Her mom, Abigale Veloz, explains that loud noises, like the crash of thunder and the pounding of the rain on the Starbucks roof, scare her.

“Miah is not the same,” Veloz said. “Miah was a happy kid, singing, TikToks, dancing. None of my kids were ever afraid of anything. … This is not Miah. Now Miah is afraid of everything, the noise, the sirens, the thunder.” 

It’s been just over three months since Miah’s 17-year-old brother, Donavan, watched her emerge from Robb Elementary, covered in blood. 

“We thought something had happened to her,” Veloz said. “They put (the survivors) in a bus, and I was talking to her through the window, and I asked her if she was all right. She said it wasn't her blood.”

Miah doesn’t like to talk about what she saw that day. “It was a lot for a kid to see. Even for myself. The next day when she told me detail by detail, I got dizzy, I went to the restroom, I threw up,” Veloz said. 

Miah spent the summer at home with her four siblings, rarely leaving the house because it's where she feels safest.

“It's our privacy. It's our home. She feels comfortable,” Veloz said. “We have movie nights where we'll put an air mattress in the living room and everybody grabs a pillow, blanket.” 

Miah can’t be in a room by herself, so her family members have developed a buddy system — even when she’s showering, she props a brace at the bottom of the door to keep it open, also letting her older brothers know not to come in. 

Her mom has slept with her every night since May 24, at first in the same bed, and now in a twin bed right next to Miah’s. 

“She has a really hard time sleeping. A lot of nightmares. The thunder at night, it's really hard for her,” Veloz said. “When I see her having a hard night, I get up and check on her, and usually we wake up together and we'll just wait, or she'll tell me what she's dreaming about and see if it helps.” 

Her mom says she’s taken Miah to her doctor multiple times because the girl hasn’t had an appetite. That’s when Miah told her she was seeing her classmates’ blood on the food in front of her. 

Miah now sees a therapist once a week. It’s not something she particularly enjoys, but her mom is considering having her go twice a week, since her nightmares are getting worse. 

When Miah does leave the house, her mom says they have to be ready to leave when Miah needs to go home. 

“We’ll go to Walmart to get the kids out of the house just to look around and do some shopping, but she has a fear; she thinks men are following her. So once that kicks in, it's time to go,” Veloz said.

Miah has found comfort in self-care — doing face masks, hair, makeup — and drawing, sketching flowers and coloring cow print patterns.

“She's picked up doing makeup. A lot of people are like she's too little. … She is, but (it) keeps her happy at home, like she does her hair, she does my hair. She does her makeup. She loves to go get her nails done,” Veloz said. 

She plans on dyeing a portion of her hair next to her face a dark royal blue — her favorite color. 

But healing takes time. And with the start of the school year right around the corner, Miah’s mom knew Miah couldn't go back, not yet.

“I know she doesn't want to go to school because she’s afraid it's going to happen again,” Veloz said. “She's not ready to leave home. She's just not. And I'm not going to push her. You know, she's not ready.”

'I have to protect my child': Uvalde parent on not being ready to send Zayon back to school in person

Children who were inside Robb Elementary on May 24, even those who weren’t in the two classrooms the gunman targeted, say they’re not sure when they’ll feel safe at school again. 

Eight-year-old Zayon Martinez was in his second grade classroom where his teacher had just started playing a movie, when he heard children screaming outside. 

That’s when he said a couple of kids and two teachers ran into his classroom, and then his teacher locked the door and told them to get under their desks. 

“They were scared,” Zayon said. “We started crying.” 

About the same time, 37-year-old Adam Martinez, Zayon’s father, was eating enchiladas at a restaurant when his phone rang.

“My wife called me, hysterical, saying there was an active shooter at Robb,” Martinez said. “I didn't even pay for the bill. I got up, I took off, and I got there in like, two minutes. I was going down the highway as fast as I could.”

When he got to Robb, he says, there were already quite a few cars and police officers at the school. He ran toward the campus, trying to get as close as he could. That’s when he ended up with a group of parents arguing with law enforcement officers.

“They're pushing the parents back, I was there telling them, ‘Y’all need to go in, why don't y'all go in’ ... and they were like, ‘It's because we're having to deal with you all,’ like blaming us on why they couldn't go in,” Martinez. 

At some point — Zayon doesn’t remember how long it took — officers reached Zayon’s classroom and told the students to run. Martinez’s 18-year-old daughter, Janell, who also had rushed to Robb in a panic, saw Zayon running out of the school and across the hot asphalt to safety, with no shoes. He had taken them off to get comfortable while watching the movie, and amid the fear and panic, forgot to put them back on. 

Martinez rushed to pick up his 12-year-old daughter from her middle school, while his wife drove to the civic center, where children were being bused to be reunited with their parents. When she found him, he was crying. 

Since then, the Martinezes have tried to make it a normal summer for their kids. Zayon has kept busy playing on a traveling baseball team. But his parents began noticing some changes in him. 

“There's some things that he worries about now that he never used to: locked doors, lights that aren't on, hearing loud noises or gunshots. Sometimes you'll hear gunshots here because of hunting or just because of the neighborhood we're in, and he'll be worried,” Martinez said. “He's asking if the door’s locked; he never used to worry about that. … He has nightmares too. There's quite a few nightmares. It’s tough to deal with.”

It wasn’t until recently, when they began shopping for the new school year, that Martinez realized Zayon wasn’t ready to go back to school. 

“As we talked about it, he was traumatized, (saying) ‘What do you mean? I don’t want to go,’ like really traumatized,” Martinez said. “He wasn't having it; he wasn't going to go.”

Martinez tried to reassure him that there would be new fencing and more police, but it didn’t calm Zayon like he had hoped. 

“He’s like, ‘Well, who cares if there's police officers, they're not going to do anything, they're not going to go in, they're not going to protect me.’ So that's when we kind of made that firm decision that he's not ready,” Martinez said. 

They decided that Zayon and his 12-year-old sister would not be going back to campuses this fall, and instead would participate in the Uvalde school district’s virtual option. 

“I have to protect my child, and even if he is safer, the perception is that he's not safe. How is he going to learn?” Martinez said. “You’re worried about your life so you can't focus. We have to keep them safe; we have to change that perception.”

In the aftermath of the tragedy, Martinez says he's gotten deeply involved in advocacy work, trying to do his part to push for accountability from the City Council, the school district, law enforcement and elected officials.

"Nothing was happening. Nobody was getting fired. It was such a cowardly act, it was embarrassing to even live in Uvalde, so I had to stand up for what was right," Martinez said. "Sometimes in the small towns, things get pushed under the rug, and I wanted to protest, I wanted to help."

'I am worried that this is going to happen again': Abcde's hesitancy on going back to school

As 11-year-old Abcde (pronounced Ab-si-dee) Flores sits on a plush chair in the El Progreso Memorial Library in Uvalde, her eyes well up with tears at the first mention of what happened at Robb Elementary. 

Abcde went to Robb for third and fourth grade before transferring to another elementary school in the district for its dual language program. She was on a field trip with her classmates when the shooting happened, and she found out about it on the way back. 

“A lot of my friends started crying because they had a lot of friends and family members there,” she said, tears rolling down her face. “I was scared because I had a cousin in the school, because I had friends there.”

Two of Abcde’s friends, Ellie Garcia and Layla Salazar, died that day. 

Abcde cries every time she thinks about what happened. 

She lives with her great-grandmother Maria Melchor, who worries about her. She says Abcde has been depressed for the past three months, and she doesn’t have anyone to speak to about what happened besides her. 

Abcde, who loves to draw and dance, made drawings for each of the victims, and she went to all the funerals to say goodbye. But still, her great-grandmother notices she’s deeply sad.

Speaking to Abcde in Spanish, she says, “Sometimes you ask me, ‘Where are the children, where are they, where did they go?’ Well, what I can tell you is that they went with God. That is all I can tell you because they are no longer here.”

“Many of them were her friends, and I try for her to not be thinking too much about that,” Melchor said. 

Despite her security fears, she has decided to send Abcde back to school in person in the fall. 

“I am worried that this is going to happen again. I would like the schools to have more security, more surveillance for the children,” Melchor said. “But (she was) already locked up because of the pandemic and then because of this. She has to go to get distracted and also to see her friends.”

She also wants Abcde to return to school so she can see the school counselor about how she has been feeling. 

The Uvalde school district has expanded the social and emotional support resources available for students who are still struggling with the long-term trauma associated with the shooting, hiring additional mental health professionals and counselors who specialize in trauma and grief. All the district's staff also completed trauma-informed care training prior to the start of school.

“At school they said they were going to have (a counselor) every day of the week; that's why I want her to go to school,” Melchor said. “I also want them to help her a little bit, I mean, because she's a good kid, she gets good grades.”

“I’m kind of nervous,” Abcde said. “(But) I’m kind of excited because I really want to learn new stuff and go see my friends.” 

“I’m afraid, scared, worried. But as I told her, I am going to let her take her phone with her now. I used to never let her take it with her so she doesn't get distracted. But now I am going to tell her to take it,” Melchor said, so Abcde can call her if anything happens. 

Miah fears for her sibling, Junior, attending pre-K

Miah’s younger sister, 9-year-old Elena, will be attending classes virtually with her, but Miah’s other siblings will be going back to school in person, including her youngest sibling, 4-year-old Miguel Cerrillo Jr., whom they call Junior. 

Miah told her mom that Junior is the first person she thought of when the shooting happened — when she thought she wasn’t going to make it, and she wasn’t going to be able to see him grow up. 

Now Junior is starting pre-K this fall, and Miah and her mom recently picked him up from a meet-the-teacher night on campus.

“On the way home, she did tear up and say she didn’t want us to send him to school, but I don't want to take that from him because it's his first year, and he was really excited,” Veloz said. “I guess because we’ve been home all summer and just sticking around, she just wants everybody to continue doing that.”

Just over two weeks after the shooting, Miah shared her first-person account of the massacre via a pre-recorded video with the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform for a hearing on gun violence. She emphasized that she’s scared that a mass shooting will happen again, and she wants lawmakers to take action to make sure it doesn’t. 

Her mom says Miah told her she’s terrified for the next time an elementary school is attacked with a classroom of children Junior’s age, who won’t be old enough to know to keep quiet and play dead, like she did. 

It’s a fear she’s not sure will go away. 

“Everybody keeps telling us it’s going to take time, but I'm like, I don't know, I don't see her getting any better, but I don't see her getting any worse. I don't know if that makes sense,” Veloz said. “I think as we go day by day, she just kind of learns how to live with herself.”

By Niki Griswold

UVALDE — Sitting on the edge of a wooden console table in Ana Rodriguez’s living room are a pair of low-top, lime green Converse sneakers. Encased in a clear display box, they appear frozen in time, like the girl who used to wear them. 

Rodriguez still remembers the day she bought them earlier this year. 

Her 10-year-old daughter, Maite, picked them out in a local store. They were the only Converse pair, exactly her size, and a bright, almost fluorescent, shade of green. Rodriguez laughs, remembering how horrified she was by the color.

"I love them! Please, can I have them?" Rodriguez remembers Maite saying.

Not long after they brought them home, Maite drew a heart on the right toe with a black Sharpie. She got to wear them for only two months.

Maite was wearing her beloved Converse sneakers May 24, the day she died alongside 18 of her classmates and two teachers, gunned down in their classrooms at Uvalde's Robb Elementary School.

Authorities identified her body by those size 5 Converse shoes.

At Rodriguez's request, Maite’s friends and family wore dark green Converse shoes to her funeral to honor her memory. Somewhat fittingly, Maite's Converse shade, "bright pear," is no longer available on the Converse website — in a way, kept special, just for Maite.

In the five months since the shooting, Rodriguez has never shared pictures of Maite’s shoes with the public, preferring to keep that piece of Maite private for herself and her two sons. And yet today, Maite and her beloved green Converse sneakers are known around the world.

That’s in part due to actor and Uvalde native Matthew McConaughey, who held up a pair of dark green high-top Converse sneakers, sharing Maite’s dream of being a marine biologist and the horror of how her body was identified by her favorite shoes, in a passionate plea for gun safety legislation at the White House two weeks after the Uvalde massacre. 

Now Maite’s green Converse shoes, with the heart on the right toe, have become a symbol of the 21 lives lost at Robb Elementary and the fight to limit access to firearms.

In the months since the shooting, Rodriguez and other relatives of the victims have pushed through their grief to demand that lawmakers take action to adopt restrictions on purchasing and accessing guns, including the kind used in the Uvalde shooting, an AR-15-style rifle that has been used in other mass shootings in Texas and elsewhere.

The parents of four of the victims created a nonprofit called Lives Robbed to advocate for gun law reforms and demand accountability from the school district, Uvalde City Council and law enforcement agencies that bungled the response to the shooting. Others have joined forces with national gun control groups.

Their efforts have captured national attention as they’ve traveled to Austin and Washington to appeal to elected officials directly and have brought the issue of gun control to the forefront of the Texas gubernatorial race. 

Their advocacy helped push Congress to pass the first federal, bipartisan gun control measures in nearly 30 years, but the legislation doesn’t come close to meeting the families’ demands for change — including raising the age to purchase a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21, implementing red flag laws and requiring background checks on all gun purchases, all proposals that face uphill battles in Republican-dominated Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott has refused the families' calls for a special legislative session to address gun violence and, beginning a day after the shooting, has flatly rejected consideration of laws that would tighten gun access.

Though their sights are set on the midterm election right around the corner, the Uvalde residents, many of whom have never been involved in politics, are committed to the long-term fight to pass state and federal gun restrictions, in the hopes that other families will be spared the same heart-shattering grief the Robb Elementary families struggle with every day. 

For Rodriguez, it’s a fight that takes a heavy emotional toll, but with green Converse sneakers on her feet, she keeps Maite’s memory alive every step of the way.

“It's a lot of work and will continue to be a lot of work. It’s a fight,” Rodriguez told the American-Statesman. “But it makes me be bolder when I put her shoes on to go to rallies and stuff like that; it makes me not be scared to talk. Because I (tell myself), ‘You're doing it for her. What would you not do for her?’ And there's nothing that I wouldn't do for her.” 

‘You feel like someone took away your whole life’s work’ 

When Dr. Roy Guerrero pulls into his driveway on a recent Wednesday evening, it’s past 8 p.m. He was checking in on two sick kids at Uvalde Memorial Hospital after a full day of seeing patients in his pediatric clinic. 

Though there are several family practice physicians in Uvalde, Guerrero is the sole pediatrician in the town of just over 15,000. Busy days are the norm for Guerrero, who sees 30 to 40 kids daily in his clinic, Encina Pediatrics, a modest but colorful converted space attached to his home in Uvalde. He has been practicing for more than 12 years in the town where he was born and raised. 

“All these kids are growing up right in front of my eyes. … I will see kids here that are turning 11 or 12 years old that I had as newborns,” Guerrero told the Statesman. “Kids that I had when I started that were 7 or 8 are having kids now and bringing their kids to me.”

It’s a place where Guerrero helps kids heal, grow and thrive. But right outside the doors is a memorial — 21 empty wooden chairs under a banner bearing the motto #UvaldeStrong, honoring the 19 children and two teachers who didn’t get the chance to heal, grow and thrive. Five of the children were his patients. 

Guerrero had been seeing one of the victims, 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, since she was 3 months old. 

“Amerie had an appointment with me that afternoon after all this happened, at 4 p.m.,” Guerrero said. “I deal with that nightmare in my brain every single day, especially when I see pictures of her. It’s an unknown name for that emotion. I don't know what that is called, that nauseating, that terror, that chest pain, everything at once.”

Guerrero vividly remembers the events of May 24 — how he raced to the hospital to an unimaginable scene —screaming parents, children injured by bullet fragments, and in the surgical area of the hospital, the bodies of two young victims. 

“One of these kids was unrecognizable. You couldn't even tell this was a kid until you looked from the neck down and saw his kid clothes. … The other had a chest wound that was so big in this tiny body,” Guerrero said. “I think there's emotions in this that don’t even have words, because you can't even explain what it is that you feel — it's nausea, it’s anger, it’s disbelief, it’s sadness.”

“Seeing children that are tragically killed in that manner makes you feel like someone took away your whole life's work,” Guerrero said. “As a pediatrician you work to grow these children to their full potential, whether it be by making sure they're walking at the right time, talking at the right time, have the right emotions as a teenager and expressing what they're supposed to. And then, for someone to just tragically take that away from you in the blink of an eye in such a destructive, horrible way. It makes you angry. It pushes you over the edge to say, it's not if I want to do something; I've got to do something."

When the opportunity arose for him to share what he witnessed that day, there was no question in his mind what he should do. 

‘We are bleeding out’: Uvalde doctor urges action on gun limits

Just over two weeks after the horrific massacre, Guerrero, clad in a dark suit with a mauve patterned tie, testified in front of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform during a hearing on gun violence. His voice steady despite his barely contained emotion, Guerrero described the horror he came across in Uvalde Memorial Hospital on May 24, and he condemned lawmakers for failing to take more action to prevent deaths from gun violence. 

“I chose to be a pediatrician. I chose to take care of children. Keeping them safe from preventable diseases I can do. Keeping them safe from bacteria and brittle bones I can do. But making sure our children are safe from guns, that’s the job of our politicians and leaders,” he told the panel.

“In this case, you are the doctors and our country is the patient. We are lying on the operating table, riddled with bullets like the children of Robb Elementary and so many other schools. We are bleeding out, and you are not there. You are sitting in your office filling out the paperwork so you can get paid. My oath as a doctor means that I signed up to save lives. I do my job. I guess it turns out that I am here to plead, to beg, to please, please do yours.”

His words, along with the testimony of an 11-year-old patient of his who survived the shooting, and heartbreaking remarks from the parents of one of the victims, captivated the attention of lawmakers in the room and on Capitol Hill. Less than one month later, President Joe Biden signed into law some modest but significant gun safety measures, including closing the “boyfriend loophole,” and incentivizing states to implement red flag laws. 

But the legislation, brokered in part by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, did not come close to meeting the demands of the families of the Uvalde victims, who ultimately want a federal ban on AR-15-style weapons.

‘I put myself in this arena’

Joining Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House in July for an event celebrating the passage of the federal gun control measure, Guerrero acknowledged the progress he and the families still want to see.

“It’s been tough being a pediatrician in a community where children do not want to return to school, and parents don’t want to send them there, with the fear of a future attack,” Guerrero said, speaking to the crowd and the nation in front of the White House, with the president standing just behind his right shoulder. 

“I see children daily with PTSD and anxiety that’s now leading to depression. I spend half my days convincing kids that no one is coming for them, and that they are safe, but how do I say that knowing that the very weapons used in the attack are still freely available? Let this only be the start of the movement towards the banning of assault weapons.”

It’s a cause he’s been fighting for loudly, publicly and wholeheartedly ever since, with no plans to slow any time soon. Less than two weeks after he first testified in front of Congress, Guerrero started an organization called Uvalde Strong for Gun Safety, recently renamed Uvalde Strong for Child Safety, focused on organizing the Uvalde community to educate people on firearm safety, push for accountability for the Uvalde victims’ families and advocate for gun restrictions.

"Once you take that step, there's no going back, right? I put myself in this arena now … and I’m laser-focused on what I’ve got to do,” Guerrero told the Statesman. “Guns are the No. 1 killer of children now, above any disease, above any kind of accidents. It's an epidemic, an epidemic that needs to get addressed, and it needs to end. Things need to change sooner than later.”

Guerrero emphasizes that the group is not "anti-gun." 

“I was raised owning guns my whole life, you know, hunting with my dad, eating what we killed. … I've always just been about sensible gun ownership,” he said. 

Despite his new commitment to activism, Guerrero said he has never considered himself a political person and still doesn’t. To him, gun safety should not be a partisan issue. 

“This is not a Republican or a Democratic thing. … Kids dying is not a political issue,” Guerrero said. “Something's got to be done. There's no question about it. You have to do the right thing and move the right mountains to save our future. Our kids are everything."

‘The biggest blow’: Uvalde mother perseveres after daughter's death

As Rodriguez rests on her brown suede couch on an October Sunday afternoon, the house is quiet, but memories of Maite seem to fill the room. 

Color emanates from the many photos of Maite displayed around the home. In several, she’s wearing her favorite color, green. In all of them, her radiant smile immediately draws attention. Among a cluster of photos on Rodriguez’s wooden console table is a bright golden urn containing Maite's ashes.

With the exception of a teal scrunchie and a lime green wristband bearing her daughter’s name, Rodriguez is dressed all in black — from her boots and leggings to her long-sleeved sweatshirt decorated with the motto "Be Kind to Your Mind." It seems to be a subtle nod to her all-consuming grief. 

In the first months of the year, Rodriguez thought the hardest thing she would have to grapple with in 2022 would be her divorce from Maite’s stepfather. Then May 24 happened. 

“It's been really hard … kind of one blow after the other. The first blow was the separation. … But when she passed, that was the biggest blow I've ever received,” Rodriguez said quietly. “After she passed, the divorce seemed like child's play. It's been smooth sailing with the divorce. I wish I could say the same about grieving my daughter.”

Now, just over five months since Maite died, Rodriguez is starting to occasionally have good days — which she largely credits to the support of her 15- and 11-year-old sons, her work and her extended family, many of whom also live in Uvalde. 

In the days after the massacre at Robb Elementary, Rodriguez said the shock and earth-shattering grief made sharing Maite’s story with anyone but family impossible. 

But as she began to process the grief, another emotion started to come through. 

“I was angry with the people that were there. Nothing was known yet. Nobody knew who could have made it, how fast everything happened, who passed away within seconds of him walking in, who didn't; we didn't know any of that. We know a little bit more now, but, you know, initially, I was like, I want people held accountable,” Rodriguez said. 

Then she saw Matthew McConaughey, with whom she had spoken at Maite’s funeral, address the world from the White House.

“I felt that he was pissed. I felt he looked angry, you know? And I thought, 'Wow, somebody is really fighting for them.' … It encouraged me to want to keep doing something,” Rodriguez said.

She started slowly, speaking to individual reporters when she felt able to.

“It was a bit hard and intimidating. But in the back of my mind was that question of, ‘What is bigger — your fear of public speaking or your love for your daughter? What is stronger?’ And for me, it was, hands down, my daughter,” Rodriguez said. 

She said her first big step into activism was participating in the Unheard Voices March and Rally on July 10 in Uvalde. Organized primarily by the families of the Robb Elementary victims, especially the Cazares family, which lost their 9-year-old daughter Jackie, the march drew hundreds of people, possibly more than 1,000, who braved the blistering Texas sun and heat to march from the school to the town square. 

At the front of the group was Rodriguez, wearing a white T-shirt with a pair of lime green sneakers in the center, and on her feet, her own pair of dark green, high-top Converse shoes with a Sharpie-drawn heart on the right toe. A large group of friends and relatives in green tie-dyed shirts with Maite’s face on the front marched alongside her.

The families’ message to the public and elected officials, which has remained the same since that first march, was threefold: They want their lost loved ones to be remembered; they demand accountability and transparency from those who failed them; and, most important, they will not stop until their gun restriction demands become law.

That third demand was the primary focus of the families’ next collective rally, this time at the Capitol in Austin at the end of August, when Rodriguez and other relatives of the Uvalde victims called for Abbott to reconvene the Legislature for a special session to raise the minimum age to purchase AR-15-style rifles from 18 to 21. The 18-year-old who killed their loved ones had purchased his weapons legally. 

One of many parents of Uvalde victims who spoke to the crowd, Rodriguez shared emotional memories of Maite, ending with a message directed toward the governor. 

“Gov. Greg Abbott, this is for you. I stand here today not asking but demanding a special session to raise the minimum age from 18 to 21 to be able to purchase an assault rifle, and while you’re at it, enhance background checks. If you do not meet our demands, then I suggest you prepare yourself, because we will vote you the hell out! We will vote you out! So stand with us, Gov. Abbott, or get the hell out of my way!” Rodriguez yelled, drawing cheers from the crowd. 

While Abbott has ordered special legislative committees to investigate the Uvalde massacre and school safety, he has refused the families’ demands and has called the prospect of raising the minimum age for assault rifle purchase "unconstitutional" — an argument that gun control activists have disputed, pointing to other states, including Republican-dominated Florida, that have adopted similar laws. 

‘I’m learning this as I go’

Rodriguez describes some of the victims' parents as being "full throttle" in their activism, but Rodriguez said her own advocacy has taken a heavy toll, and she hasn’t been able to be as involved as other parents. 

“I was really lost at one point. I was so involved in a lot of things, and it was taking every ounce of me emotionally. It’s hard. The rally in Austin was a big one. … We took the charter bus back (to Uvalde), and on the ride back home I cried the entire time. … I see the bus full of people, and everybody's going back with their kids; everybody's going back with their significant other … but (without Maite) I felt I was going back empty-handed after all that fighting,” Rodriguez said. 

“I was drained. I came home from the rally, and I cried for two days. I just closed myself in my room, and it wasn't healthy; it wasn't good. So I decided to take a step back,” Rodriguez said.

Now she says she’s trying to find a balance between fighting for Maite and maintaining a sense of normalcy for herself and her two sons as they continue to grieve. 

“There's no guide. I'm learning this as I go, I learned that I needed to pull back because everything I was doing was just like applying the Band-Aid and ripping it off, applying the Band-Aid and ripping it off,” Rodriguez said. “I try not to beat myself up about it because I'm just one person, and I talk to (Maite) a lot, and I let her know, ‘I hope you know I'm just taking a break so I can come back stronger.”

When the "Dr. Phil" show reached out to Rodriguez in September asking her to appear on the program, she agreed.

“I said, ‘I think this is going to be probably one of the biggest opportunities that I'm going to have to talk about Maite.' You know, he has such a huge platform. … Talking about her and letting people know what happened that day and who she was to me and who she was as a person was something that I really wanted to do,” Rodriguez said. 

She said she did her best to honor Maite and share some memories of her, but it was also important to her to convey the horror of what she as a parent experienced May 24. 

“It's raw, and people need to know, because there's people out here who think this is not real — it's fake, that it's a hoax. And it's like, no, it really isn't,” Rodriguez said.

She also agreed to go on camera to film a personal campaign ad for Beto O’Rourke that began airing in TV markets statewide Oct. 1. 

The ad begins with home videos of Maite — dancing in ballet class, feeding ducks and posing next to a microscope. It then cuts to Rodriguez, who’s sitting in her home and wearing earrings depicting Maite’s green shoes. Speaking to the camera, Rodriguez describes her daughter, then criticizes Abbott's lack of action "to stop the next shooting."

Rodriguez and several other parents of Uvalde victims appeared in another statewide TV ad for O’Rourke, and many traveled to Edinburg to rally for the Democratic challenger ahead of his debate with Abbott at the end of September. 

‘He just kind of stayed quiet’

Though Rodriguez said she has never considered herself to be a political person, and in the past didn’t participate in elections, voting will be a priority for her this year. 

She said that when she met with the governor in person a few months after the shooting, she implored him to take action on gun safety measures, and she got angry when he doubled down on his approach of focusing on mental health. 

“I said, ‘Imagine (your daughter), visually, laying on the ground in a pool of blood with her head shot off.’ I said, ‘Does it hurt?’ He just kind of stayed quiet. I said, ‘Because that's my reality. I don't have to imagine it. I know my daughter laid up on that ground without half of her head,” Rodriguez said.

In response to a request for comment, a spokeswoman for the governor emphasized his sympathy for the families of the Uvalde victims and repeated his argument that raising the age to purchase AR-15-style weapons would be unconstitutional. 

“Governor Abbott and First Lady Abbott join all Texans in mourning every single innocent life lost that tragic day, and we pray for the families who are suffering from the loss of a loved one," Renae Eze said in a statement, adding that the governor visited with victims' families in Uvalde to provide assistance and ensure they're receiving adequate resources. “This year, federal courts have made clear that the Second Amendment prohibits raising the age to buy a semiautomatic rifle from 18 to 21. … Governor Abbott continues to work on solutions focused on the root of the problem: mental health.”

With early voting already underway, both the Abbott and O’Rourke campaigns are in the final stretch of the race, with Abbott consistently polling ahead. Yet even if O’Rourke were to pull off an upset, he almost certainly would be working with a Republican majority in the Legislature, which has loosened gun restrictions over the past several sessions.

The uphill battle for O’Rourke and the victims’ families supporting him is also evident in Uvalde, where in 2020, then-President Donald Trump won with nearly 60% of the vote.

“I feel like we've gotten some support, definitely shout out to all the supporters, but there is also no way to sugarcoat it — there's division here,” Rodriguez said.

“People like their guns, and, you know, I'm not out here trying to take anybody's guns away. I'm just out here trying to buy some time, three years," she said, referring to raising the age to purchase assault-style rifles.

Rodriguez has received hateful messages for her activism from people who criticize her for being paid to appear in O'Rourke's ad, even though she was not, and who claim that she's lying about the details of her daughter's horrific death.

She said she does her best to ignore the vicious messages and won’t stop fighting for gun reform in Maite’s honor. Part of what gives her the strength to do so is seeing how Maite’s legacy has taken on a life of its own and resonated with people around the world.

‘I’m trying to become who I was raising her to be’

Rodriguez regularly sees strangers wearing green Converse shoes with a heart on the right toe and receives pictures of people wearing them all over the country, as well as messages about how Maite’s story has affected them. 

She recently received a text from a teacher in Missouri whose school started a program called the "green shoe kindness bulletin board" to help create awareness about how to tell a trusted adult about people showing signs of hurting themselves or others. Already, it has helped teachers intervene with one student in the school. 

“Even after death, the fact that she's a part of possibly saving someone from taking their own life, it’s a big deal. It's a big deal to me because it's painful, you know? Because I can't have her, and she didn't commit suicide, but she might have been a part of some parents out there not having the pain that I have,” Rodriguez said, fighting back tears.

She misses Maite every day and describes her as mature yet goofy, curious and motivated. Maite was teaching herself how to use a sewing machine and a DSLR camera, and she had her heart set on going to Corpus Christi for college to study marine biology.

Though her grief often feels unbearable, Rodriguez, who sent her sons to school this year with bulletproof backpacks, said she is committed to continuing to fight for Maite. 

“I'm trying to become who I was raising her to be,” Rodriguez said. “Strong, independent, vocal, opinionated, healthy, kind, empathetic. I'm trying to practice what I preached. So I just really hope that she's proud of what I've been doing, because I was raising her to be exactly who I'm becoming.”

By Tony Plohetski

Editor's note: This story contains reporting that some readers may find disturbing.

Uvalde Justice of the Peace Eulalio “Lalo” Diaz can’t silence the question haunting him since a gunman at Robb Elementary School walked into a fourth grade classroom and opened fire.

Diaz, who helped identify victims of the May 24 attack, wonders whether a faster police response, rather than the 77-minute delay, might have saved any of the 19 children and two teachers.

“You figure, during that time, most of them, based on what I saw, were shot in the first few minutes," he said. "Time was of the essence. The quicker you get to them …”

Stephen Stephens, director of Uvalde Emergency Medical Services, stood with his medic crews outside the school for an hour ready to treat victims while police waited to confront the gunman. He wonders what would have happened had they entered immediately.

“I know we were ready, and I’m just going to leave it at that,” Stephens told the American-Statesman. “We were standing by, waiting.”

Five months after the shooting, the law enforcement failures of that day have been well documented through the release of hours of video footage, a report by a Texas House investigative committee and testimony from the head of the Department of Public Safety. But inside a Texas Rangers investigation into the shooting and law enforcement inaction, authorities have turned to the potential cost of that delay and the question of whether a faster response could have saved lives.

Dr. Mark Escott, chief medical officer for the city of Austin, told the Statesman that he has begun a review sought by the Rangers to try to determine whether any victims had “potentially survivable wounds" — the results of which will be used by Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee to help weigh charging any responding officers.

Escott said he is creating a panel of five national experts in emergency medicine, forensics and trauma to analyze medical records, autopsies and photographs and will attempt to reach “a reasonable degree of medical certainty” of survivability for each victim.

Generally, similar studies have shown that mass shootings are highly lethal. Officials have said because of the severity of the wounds of some Uvalde victims, they had to rely on DNA evidence to confirm their identities.

Escott said the panel will review whether bullets directly pierced or grazed vital organs or whether any victim sustained wounds that could have been treated but they instead died from blood loss awaiting help.

At this early stage, based on information he has reviewed, Escott said it is too soon to determine whether any victim could have survived if there had been a faster response. Autopsy reports, the key piece of evidence, are not yet finalized. Preliminary autopsies obtained by the Statesman said five victims had “multiple gunshot wounds” while others suffered “gunshot wounds" to the head, chest, torso or unspecified parts of the body.

According to the preliminary autopsy reports, death certificates and interviews by the Statesman, medics retrieved four victims from the classroom after they were found to either have a pulse or were still breathing. The 17 others were pronounced dead in the school.

Among the four, two students died at Uvalde Memorial Hospital; Dr. Roy Guerrero, a Uvalde pediatrician who arrived at the hospital after the shooting, said in a recent interview with the Statesman that those children had catastrophic injuries and that he does not think they could have survived, even with emergency care.

One child died in an ambulance in Hondo on the way to a hospital in San Antonio, Diaz said. No other details of that child's condition have been released.

Teacher Eva Mireles, who called her husband to say she had been shot, died in an ambulance before it left the campus, Diaz said. He added that he has shared such information with families.

The painful question of whether a faster police response could have potentially saved any victim lingers not only in Uvalde, but also among investigators. DPS Director Lt. Col. Steve McCraw, whose agency has been fiercely criticized for not taking over the response and for putting the blame on local police, recently told an oversight commission: "The question is how many kids did die in that room or teachers died because we missed that magic hour. It's not just 'stop the killing.' You've got to stop the dying. And we didn't get through that door."

Grief compounded by delayed police response

The catastrophic police response compounded the tragedy of the May 24 shooting. Video obtained by the Statesman and KVUE-TV in July showed dozens of officers pacing in the hallway, checking their phones and increasingly arming themselves — but taking no action to enter the classroom for more than an hour after an initial attempted breach.

Repeated law enforcement misstatements about that day further undermined the community’s faith in officials. Escott said to ensure the study’s integrity and independence, each physician will make their own assessment followed by a committee discussion when there is disagreement.

“We plan to make this as objective as possible,” he said. “Ultimately, we want the Uvalde community and the larger community to trust the results.”

The answer about whether the delayed response contributed to the death toll has been speculative. A Texas House committee report in July said, “Given the information known about the victims who survived through the time of the breach and who later died on the way to the hospital, it is plausible that some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait 73 additional minutes for rescue.”

Escott said the panel also will consider unique factors in the Uvalde shooting, including a lack of multiple nearby trauma centers — the nearest Level I trauma center is 84 miles away in San Antonio — and that most victims were small children, and the overall medical response, including from medics at the scene.

Ambulances were ready and waiting at Robb Elementary

According to newly obtained interviews, ambulances were dispatched to Robb Elementary at 11:35 a.m., two minutes after the first barrage of gunfire in the classroom, and arrived at 11:38 a.m.

Stephens said that at 11:40 a.m., the first arriving unit was directed to “stage” and await law enforcement instruction. Over the next several minutes, all four of the city’s ambulances arrived. At 11:53 a.m., Stephens, still unaware of the scope of the unfolding massacre, said he began fearing the worst and asked other ambulances in the region to respond.  

Stephens said as medics triaged the wounded, each of the four victims met the criteria — that they were breathing and had a pulse — for being taken to the hospital. 

However, Escott and other medical experts interviewed by the Statesman cautioned that a patient might meet standards for being taken to the hospital but still not survive.

"Unfortunately, people may meet the criteria for being transported but have injuries that are not survivable under any circumstance," Escott said.

Dr. Lillian Liao, pediatric trauma medical director at University Hospital in San Antonio, added: “It just depends on where they are injured and whether we have the ability to repair the damage. You can’t always put them back together. You just do your best.”

A fast response is key to saving lives

Doctors have long discussed the “golden hour” of trauma — that patients with certain wounds have 60 minutes or less to reach a hospital. 

However, Liao, who treated Uvalde victims and those from the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting, said the notion that all patients have that long is often incorrect, especially if they are profusely bleeding. 

Most adults have 4 to 6 liters of blood, and if they are shot or stabbed, “you only have so much to bleed out. We only have so much blood in our body, and once we lose all of it, without replacement we die. That can happen in as little as five minutes, depending on what is injured,” she said.

The priority must remain to reach a patient quickly, said Dr. Reed Smith, operational medical director for the Arlington County Fire and Police Departments in Virginia near Washington.

"We consider getting to the patient as the first medical intervention,” he said. “It's not just an operational goal. It is a medical goal."

Over the years, the medical community also has launched public efforts to better educate ordinary citizens on how to help in an emergency with traumatic wounds.

The “Stop the Bleed” campaign, for instance, encourages bystanders to get trained and equipped to help apply tourniquets to those suffering a blood loss. The effort was partly the result of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary that killed 20 children and six school employees.

What similar studies found 

Escott, who also served as Travis County’s interim health authority during the 2020 outbreak of COVID-19 and who is certified by the American Board of Emergency Medicine, said previous similar reviews found many mass shooting victims likely died instantly. However, researchers also have determined in other cases that it was possible that others faced a greater survival chance had they gotten to an ambulance and trauma center faster. 

Escott said he is not familiar with published research on pediatric patients after they were shot with an AR-15-style weapon such as what the Uvalde shooter used.

“The fact that this incident largely involved children and a rifle that was used to commit these acts, changes the dynamics, as compared to some of the other previously published literature,” he said.

Smith teamed with another physician and paramedic to study the aftermath of multiple mass shootings.

Generally, he said, active shooting victims have chest and head wounds, while life-threatening extremity injuries are less common. He and other researchers found the most potentially survivable wounds were to the chest that did not puncture the heart or injure a major artery. They also learned that wounds to the abdomen that did not hit more than one organ increased a victim’s chances. 

Among the recent studies, Smith and fellow researchers performed a similar study after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that killed 49 people in 2016. After reviewing autopsies to determine the site of the probable fatal injury, Smith and his team found that 16 victims had potentially survivable wounds. 

"From the perspective of fire, EMS, police and public safety, even if there is one person who is survivable, we need to go to work and get in there and save them,” Smith said. "All I can say about the timeline in Uvalde is the first medical intervention is getting to the side of the patient and any delay has the potential to worsen outcomes."

Smith said one recommendation he and other experts have issued was to improve how quickly bleeding patients receive tourniquets. They also have suggested that EMS agencies partner with local hospitals and blood banks to help make sure patients can receive infusions in ambulances rather than at the hospital. Another point of consideration is having medics respond with police, potentially entering the danger zone, rather than waiting for police to secure a scene.

Smith said an inability to access certain medical and law enforcement records hindered his research. The DPS told Escott that he and his team could review “post-mortem examination reports, law enforcement records related to casualty assessment and management, EMS patient care reports, fire department related patient care documentation, emergency department and hospital records and relevant photographs.”

Smith is advocating for the federal government to establish an ongoing group, similar to the National Transportation Safety Board, to respond to future mass shootings to help analyze medical responses.

"The truth is that we have to talk about these events, because they are going to happen again,” he said. 

Escott said that he does not intend to publish specific information about each child, although he hopes the research team could meet with parents or families if they desire details.

Diaz said he thinks the results will help bring deeply sought information to the community, albeit with potentially painful answers.

“If it says something more concrete, it is going to open another wound,” he said. “That is when they will know that they maybe had a chance to make it.”

By Ryan Autullo and Tony Plohetski

More than six months after the mass shooting in Uvalde, grieving families and the public are continuing a fierce fight for investigative records, including videos and officer statements, that would help reveal the full truth of the failed law enforcement response at Robb Elementary School.

But as they press for answers from records that authorities insist remain confidential, six Texas lawmakers have quietly obtained investigatory information through written agreements with the Texas Department of Public Safety in which they vowed to keep the records secret, the American-Statesman has learned.

The rarely used nondisclosure agreements, which are legal under state law, underscore the unusual amount of secrecy that authorities continue to exert on the investigation, deepening concerns about a lack of transparency that have persisted since the May 24 attack that killed 19 students and two teachers.

The contracts, which have not been previously reported, are considered helpful among some lawmakers in preparing legislation targeting gun control and school safety. They say that, with a broader picture of what happened during the shooting, they will be able to draft stronger bills for the legislative session, which starts next month, rather than wait for authorities to conclude the investigation.

"Every lawmaker needs to begin this session with the fullest body of knowledge," said state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, whose district includes Uvalde and who has received information through a nondisclosure agreement.

But the contracts are also viewed by some elected leaders and transparency advocates as an unjustified extension of secrecy by the DPS and lawmakers for information that many contend should be widely available to the public by now.

Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, said that, while she respects the need for confidentiality during the investigation, she is uncomfortable signing onto such agreements.

"Ultimately, I believe public information belongs to the people of Texas, so I would not likely sign a nondisclosure agreement if it would prohibit me from eventually sharing matters of public interest with my constituents at the appropriate time,” Zaffirini said.

Among those most affected by the shooting, the slow flow of information continues to prolong their grieving.

“The parents should have that information,” said Jesse Rizo, who lost his 9-year-old niece, Jackie Cazares, that in the attack. “The longer it takes for that to come out, the longer that delays the healing process."

Texas’ law guiding the release of public records makes it nearly impossible for a typical resident to access investigative files classified as confidential. But it makes an exception for certain elected officials. A state agency — in this case, the DPS — must turn over confidential information upon request from a state lawmaker who promises confidentiality.

Reid Pillifant, a First Amendment attorney who represents a coalition of media outlets, including the American-Statesman, in a lawsuit seeking the public release of information from the DPS, said he does not fault lawmakers for getting the material but believes the agency should not require secrecy agreements. 

"I think most of the lawmakers who have access to this information have recognized that the public should also have access to this,” he said. “The families need to know what happened that day, and the public needs to be able to hold these agencies accountable."

The records are even off-limits to the city of Uvalde. This week, the city filed a lawsuit asking a judge to compel the district attorney to hand over investigative files for its ongoing internal affairs investigation into the Uvalde Police Department.

The agreements add to transparency concerns that have dominated the investigation since the beginning, when Gov. Greg Abbott heralded the responding law enforcement officers as heroes only to later backtrack amid reports that officers waited for more than an hour before entering a classroom to confront the shooter.

A state legislative committee, empaneled to investigate the shooting, has routinely held hearings and fact-gathering behind closed doors. And the DPS, which faces prosecutors' scrutiny over its own failed response, is the controlling agency of the records and it is honoring a request by Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee to withhold documents.

The DPS does not track how often lawmakers have received confidential information through such agreements.

Freedom of information advocates also have pointed out that the ongoing investigation will not result in charges against the shooter, an 18-year-old Uvalde resident whom officers killed during the rampage, diminishing the need for secrecy. And legal experts have told the Statesman that Busbee could face difficulty prosecuting officers for failing to act.

In addition to Gutierrez, other state lawmakers who have received confidential information are Sens. Royce West, Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa and Paul Bettencourt, and Reps. Dustin Burrows and Tracy King, according to the DPS. Most of the agreements were signed in June or July. 

West, Hinojosa, and Bettencourt are among 11 members of a Senate committee investigating the shooting. Burrows chaired a similar three-person group in the Texas House. 

Adding to the secrecy, some lawmakers will not say what information they've requested from the DPS. A representative in Bettencourt's office declined to say, and West did not respond to requests for comment.

Hinojosa's office shared his written request with the Statesman. He asked for 911 audio recordings, body-worn camera recordings, law enforcement vehicle recordings and communications among local, state and federal agencies.

Hinojosa also requested any policy manual governing joint operations between the DPS and local law enforcement in an active shooter or hostage situation, all ballistics reports and any document that details the presence of all law enforcement personnel at the school.

Did video release violate agreement? 

The clearest understanding of the massacre has come in a report from the House committee that investigated the shooting and from a 77-minute video from a hallway camera in the school. The video, which shows a disorganized army of officers pacing outside a classroom as they waited to take down the shooter, was released by the Statesman and KVUE-TV on July 12. Hours earlier, Burrows had announced his intention to release part of the video — which he later did in possible violation of the confidentiality agreement he signed a month earlier.

In the days before Burrows’ announcement, elected leaders had been calling for the video's release, and its lack of disclosure had intensified anger among Uvalde residents. The evening before Burrows’ announcement and the news outlets’ publishing of the video, Abbott also called for its release. 

“The people of Uvalde, they deserve to know exactly what happened,” the governor said. “And I urge that it happens very quickly.” 

Burrows said that, behind the scenes, he was trying to determine if releasing part of the video would violate the nondisclosure agreement. He said, ultimately, he concluded that it was more important for the public to see the footage, an edited version that did not have sound and began playing after the gunman had entered the classroom.

"There is no manual out there to tell you how to navigate an NDA in a situation like this,” Burrows told the Statesman. “I announced to the public at large my intention, and I told DPS specifically what I was going to do, why I was going to do it and when I was going to do it. I felt law enforcement at large had ample notice of my intentions and had an ample opportunity to try to dissuade or stop me if they so desired."

Burrows said the DPS has not accused him of violating the agreement. Under state law, a lawmaker who misuses classified information obtained through a confidentiality agreement is guilty of official misconduct and may face a fine of $1,000 and six months in jail.

DPS spokesman Travis Considine said the agency is not aware of anyone who has faced penalties for violating such an agreement. The DPS declined to say whether it will pursue action against Burrows for releasing part of the video.

Agreement helps lawmaker form 'certain assertions'

The Statesman obtained a copy of a nondisclosure agreement along with its conditions.

The DPS, under Freeman Martin, the deputy director of Homeland Security Operations, asks the recipient to make only as many copies of the information as necessary and to secure the files. When the information is no longer useful, the copies and any notes must be destroyed. A lawmaker who receives the information is allowed to share it with an aide but only after making it known that the information is protected.

And, Martin writes, if a member of the public requests the information, the lawmaker must seek to withhold its disclosure by requesting a ruling from the state attorney general’s office.

“Please notify me of any such public information request and request for a ruling so that we may submit comments to the open records division arguing against disclosures,” the DPS guidance reads.

Gutierrez, the senator from San Antonio, said he finally agreed to the confidentiality stipulations after trying multiple ways to obtain the information without a nondisclosure agreement. First, he said he submitted a request under the Texas Public Information Act, but officials invoked an exception for an ongoing investigation. Then, he unsuccessfully sued.

Gutierrez said he wanted to know what went wrong so he could draft legislation to address shortcomings in existing law. In his requests, he sought information on what he called failures by the DPS to take over the scene from Uvalde school police.

For the upcoming legislative session, Gutierrez has proposed a bill that would use state money to compensate victims' families. Another bill he filed proposes to raise the minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21.

"I have to be able to start this session in a manner and means by which I will be able to make certain assertions," Gutierrez said.

But, while recognizing lawmakers' interest in the material, government transparency advocates say using nondisclosure agreements to shield information from broad public release is an affront to the Uvalde community.

“It’s like, ‘What information can we hide and who gets it and who doesn’t?'” said Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. “‘You can have something if you sign this NDA, but you can’t tell your constituents anything.' That game should not be played.”

Senate report coming soon

Beyond Gutierrez, no other lawmaker with access to the information has filed a bill directly related to the Uvalde shooting. The first day lawmakers could file a bill for the upcoming 88th Legislature was Nov. 14. The deadline is March 10.

Reps. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, and Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, filed similar bills that would require sales of multiple firearms to be reported to law enforcement agencies. Moody’s bill, which also includes magazine sales, would require the DPS to inform the sheriff where the buyer resides.

The Uvalde shooter legally purchased multiple assault rifles right after his 18th birthday.

A bill from state Rep. Shawn Thierry, D-Houston, would require a safety vestibule in any construction or renovation of a school's main entrance. Public entry must then be limited to the main entrance.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has suggested making schools safer by locking all but one door of the building.

Meanwhile, the Senate committee formed to discuss measures on improving public safety is still drafting its report. 

"I can't commit to a day when the report will be issued, but it will be soon," said Shelby Conine, an aide to Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, who chairs the committee.

As lawmakers gather information before the legislative session, residents in Uvalde remain frustrated.

Diana Olvedo-Karau, a Uvalde resident who has helped lead a chorus for transparency, questioned the use of nondisclosure agreements among lawmakers. 

“Why are only select individuals getting the information?” she asked. “It’s very unfair to the families and the community at large. How can we expect parents, even our community, to move forward if we do not have answers?”