The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media outlet that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government, and statewide issues, first published the article titled “Uvalde officer asked permission to shoot gunman outside school but got no answer, report finds.”
According to a report evaluating the law enforcement response to the shooting, a Uvalde police officer asked a supervisor’s permission to shoot the shooter who would later kill 21 people at Robb Elementary School in May before he entered the building, but the supervisor either did not hear the request or responded too late.
Prior to the shooter entering Robb Elementary, a Uvalde officer standing outside the school made a request that had not previously been publicized. According to a report released on Wednesday by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University in San Marcos, the officer reportedly feared shooting children while attempting to neutralize the shooter.
A number of missed opportunities to engage or stop the shooter before he entered the school are among the many new details about the May 24 shooting that are revealed in the report.
The report’s most important new information was the suspect’s refusal to comply with the officer’s request to shoot him outside the school.
According to the report, “a reasonable officer would conclude that use of deadly force was warranted in this case, based upon the totality of the circumstances.” According to the Texas Penal Code, which was cited in the report, someone is justified in using deadly force if they have a good faith belief that it is immediately necessary to stop a murder from happening.
The gunman was still in the school’s parking lot when one of the first responding officers, a Uvalde school district police officer, drove through it “at a high rate of speed,” according to the report. According to the report, if the suspect had driven more slowly or parked his car at the edge of the school property and come up on foot, the officer might have seen him.
The report also uncovered issues with the way the school maintains building security. According to the report, students frequently prop open doors in the school, which “can create a situation that results in danger to students.” A teacher had propped open the exterior door that the shooter used to enter the school before closing it, but it wasn’t properly locked.
According to the report, the teacher neglected to check to see if the door was locked. Even if she had checked, the teacher didn’t seem to have the right tools to lock the door. The report also mentions that even if the door had locked securely, the suspect could still have entered the building by shattering the door’s glass.
100 shots were fired in the first three minutes after the shooter entered rooms 111 and 112, from 11:33 to 11:36 a.m., according to an audio analysis described in the report.
Before the shooter—a 18-year-old Uvalde man—entered rooms 111 and 112 for the final time, the report drew attention to other problems with the law enforcement response.
Security cameras captured the shooter entering room 111, leaving it, and then returning to it before police arrived. Because a key had to be inserted from the hallway side of the door, the report concluded that the lock on room 111 “was never engaged.”
Pete Arredondo, the chief of police for the Uvalde school district, previously told The Texas Tribune that he had checked room 111’s door but found it to be locked.
A high likelihood of officers at either end of the school’s south hallway shooting officers at the other end if the suspect had re-entered the classroom was created by the fact that the officers were stationed there in multiple teams, the report states.
According to the report, the officers failed to properly engage the shooter after the gunman had entered the building and had lost momentum.
When the attacker started shooting at the officers, “ideally, the officers would have engaged the attacker with precise return fire,” the report stated. “It would have been risky to stay in place or even move forward for a better position to fire accurate retaliation, and there was a good chance that some of the officers would have been wounded or killed. The officers might have been able to stop the assailant as well, allowing them to concentrate on providing the injured with prompt medical attention.”
Any policy responses to the tragedy—the deadliest school shooting in Texas history—are likely to be informed by the report.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said in a statement that “the 26-page report from ALERRT outlining the attack on Robb Elementary School in complete detail was very difficult for me to read today as it will be for all Texans.” In the upcoming weeks and months, more reports from the FBI, Texas Rangers, and Uvalde County district attorney are anticipated to be made public, he said.
