New security footage obtained by the Austin Statesman newspaper details the brutality of the Robb Elementary School massacre that killed 19 children and two teachers last month in Uvalde, Texas.
The video,
which may offend the public
, shows the stages of the massacre and is made up of various recordings edited by the Austin Statesman and station KVUE, taken from a security camera outside the school, a camera in the hallway, the an officer's body camera, cell phone recordings and a 911 call.
The first thing it reveals are the moments before the attacker entered the school, just when he had just crashed his vehicle and fired in the immediate vicinity of the place.
He then shows him stopping in one of the school's hallways, running his hands through his hair before entering rooms 111 and 112.
The van used by the Uvalde, Texas, killer to get to Robb Elementary School, on May 24, 2022. Reuters
Seconds later, a boy leans out of the hallway the attacker just passed and runs to the sounds of his semi-automatic rifle firing.
The aforementioned media edited the video to remove the sound of the children screaming in the room while the murderer unloaded his weapon.
The bursts he fires are heard intermittently for several minutes.
About three minutes after the attacker entered the school, the first three officers are seen running down the hallway to try to reach the classrooms under attack.
At that moment, a volley of gunfire is heard and the officers scramble for cover behind the hallway.
[The mayor of Uvalde denies that a police officer had the perpetrator of the shooting within sight]
Minutes tick by and the school hallway camera shows officers pacing back and forth, looking at blueprints of the school and talking on their radios, but they are not seen trying to enter the room.
19 minutes after the attacker's entry, the first ballistic shield arrives in the school corridor.
According to Uvalde Police Chief Pete Arredondo, this was one of the teams that officers were waiting for so they could move more safely down the hallway to the room where the children and the killer were.
However, it took almost an hour for the agents to neutralize the threat.
Images captured by security cameras show the protective equipment and weapons that Uvalde police had when the shooting began at the elementary school.Austin American-Statesman Journal
Arredondo has been harshly criticized for delaying the agents' response.
It took 77 minutes to intervene to take down the attacker, since he entered the school (although his grandmother had already reported him half an hour before for shooting him in the face and there were other reports of shots being fired near the school).
Arredondo was suspended from his post on June 22 and resigned as a city councilman last week following criticism.
Among his justifications is the alleged lack of weapons to confront the attacker and a key to open the classroom.
[The minute-by-minute timeline of the massacre at Uvalde Elementary School reflects the slow response of the police]
However, both justifications were denied by the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Steve McGraw, who pointed out that the agents had a ballistic shield from minute 19 and had enough weapons and personnel to confront the attacker three minutes after who entered school.
He also said that they did not try to open the classroom, which was never locked.
The video published by the Austin Statesman on Tuesday seems to reinforce McGraw's conclusions, as it shows dozens of heavily armed officers waiting for more than an hour in the corridor, without confronting the assailant.
They even waited after the last shots were heard in the classroom, 45 minutes after the killer entered the school.
McGraw has insisted that officers confront the killer immediately,
even if it meant putting their own lives in danger.
Calls to the 911 emergency phone between 12:03 and 12:43 from some of the people who were in the classrooms reveal that the officers knew that there were people alive, including that a girl urged them to enter to save them.
Agents enter the classroom and kill the killer at Uvalde Elementary School on May 24, 2022. Austin Statesman
At 12:50 pm, 77 minutes after the killer entered, a group of officers waiting outside the room finally enters and several shots are heard, at which point the video compiled by the Austin Statesman and KVUE ends.
According to authorities, a Border Patrol agent killed the shooter.
He had arrived around 12:15 with a heavily armed Department of Homeland Security special tactics group.
State investigators are still trying to determine from forensic analysis how many victims died in the minutes police waited to act.
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