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Exclusive: The former police officer investigated for the response to the Uvalde school massacre was hired to protect the city's children

2022-10-06T14:38:53.278Z


Officer Crimson Elizondo is investigated by the DPS after the Uvalde massacre. She is now a CISD police officer to take care of the children of the city.


Dogs give comfort to children who return to classes in Uvalde after shooting 1:23

(CNN) --

Texas State Police arrived at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, within two minutes of an attacker entering the institution and beginning his massacre last May.

Crimson Elizondo is seen in his Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) uniform, gun drawn, outside the school building in Uvalde, and then briefly in the hallway in another police officer's body camera footage. law.

She was one of the first of 91 DPS officers to arrive, one of 376 total law enforcement personnel who attended the school where the shooter remained for 77 minutes — with dead, dying and traumatized victims — before being taken into custody. .

  • "She died trying to save her classmates": what we know about the victims of the shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas

The response to the attack that killed 19 children and two teachers has been denounced as an "abject failure" with enough blame to be spread widely.

The school police chief was fired, and now seven DPS officers are under investigation for what they did — or didn't do.

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CNN exclusively discovered that Elizondo is one of those investigated.

A source close to the investigation also confirmed this to CNN.

He no longer works for the DPS.

During the summer she left and got a new job.

Now, he's a police officer for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (CISD), where his role is to protect some of the same kids who survived the Robb Elementary School shooting.

Elizondo declined to speak to CNN in person, by phone or direct message.

Parents recognized her.

Uvalde CISD said it wanted to hire 10 more officers after the May 24 attack.

It did not specifically announce Elizondo's hiring over the summer, although the names and photos of her and four other police officers, a lieutenant and a security guard are on her website, under the banner "KEEP UCISD SAFE."

Superintendent Hal Harrell told a special town hall meeting in August that at least 33 DPS officers would also be deployed around the district's eight schools.

After initial concern from residents that the officers who failed to stop the killing would be tasked with school security, Father Brett Cross told CNN he had been assured that deployed DPS officers would not have responded to the shooting.

Crimson Elizondo was clearly visible in Uvalde police body camera recordings released by the mayor.

Many other images have not been made public.

In his new position, that restriction does not apply to Elizondo.

Children and her parents walked past her as the school year began at Uvalde Elementary School, the new home for the youngest students who survived the bloodshed at Robb.

And some parents, including those who lost their children in the massacre, recognized her from body camera footage released by the mayor, family members told CNN.

"We are upset and angered by the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District's (UCISD) decision to hire Officer Crimson Elizondo. Her hiring calls into question the credibility and rigor of UCISD's investigative and human resource practices," according to a statement from family representatives.

CNN found that this made them uncomfortable, another reminder of the deadly day in a city that is full of such memories.

But they didn't know she was being investigated.

It's also unclear if the school district knew about the investigation when it was hired.

The statement from the family's representatives calls for all department officials to be suspended pending a third-party investigation, the results of which "must be made known" to the public and to the families of the victims.

"Our children have been taken from us. We will not stop fighting until we have answers and ensure that the safety of children in our community is the highest priority," the statement said.

Cross, the legal guardian of Uziyah Garcia, one of the children killed at Robb Elementary School, says he is "disgusted" by what the district did.

"I'm absolutely horrified," he told CNN's Anderson Cooper, adding that the school board met with him and offered to remove those officers to off-campus functions.

He says that he will continue to maintain a stakeout outside the school board offices until all officers are suspended.

The district and its staff have not responded to emails and calls, or a personal approach from CNN about this story.

secret scrutiny

The Texas DPS, the state agency that assists local law enforcement with serious incidents, announced an internal investigation into its employees who responded to the attack on Robb.

Sources familiar with the investigation confirmed to CNN that Elizondo is one of seven officers whose conduct is being investigated by DPS, but neither their names nor their actions or inactions have been made public.

In an internal memo written to the organization's director, obtained by CNN, DPS cited "actions that may be inconsistent with training and requirements" as the reason the officers were referred for investigation.

Sources familiar with the investigation told CNN that Elizondo was not properly equipped and that she told investigators she did not feel comfortable entering the school without her gear.

Elizondo was briefly inside the hallway as the attack took place, but he was not wearing a bulletproof vest.

Police body camera footage and footage seen by CNN shows Elizondo arriving outside the school as one of the first officers to respond to a report of a gunman at Robb Elementary School.

He gets out of his official vehicle, but doesn't grab a bulletproof vest or his long rifle, as officers are trained to do.

He doesn't go near the school, but stays with the other agency officers outside the fence until he receives a radio call: "Shots fired inside the building!"

  • Uvalde students return to classes after the massacre of 21 people.

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Elizondo runs with other officers to the eastern end of the building that housed rooms 111 and 112. Shortly thereafter, responding officers are informed that the attacker is in a room on the west side.

After that, the more than an hour of confusion and delay before someone goes to help the staff and students trapped in rooms 111 and 112, the catalog of errors that has become part of the Uvalde tragedy.

Elizondo briefly entered the building, but mostly stayed outside.

As the agents prepared for what became the final breach, he offered to help a colleague and went to collect supplies for him.

He was outside the school when the attacker was killed.

Body-worn camera footage shows the hallway filled with so many people turned into a massacre scene as officers ushered students out of classrooms and assessed their injuries.

Elizondo was quick to arrive, urging the students to "go, go, go" if they could, and not look at their injuries or the blood on the ground.

She comforted a boy while an officer checked his wounds, telling him over and over that she was with him, that he would be fine, and that his parents would be notified soon.

Footage shows him riding a school bus to the hospital with the students who had been shot and traumatized, again helping care for them.

DPS Director Col. Steven McCraw said in August, "Each of our officers will be subject to prosecutorial scrutiny and an internal investigation: just because they haven't broken the law doesn't mean they've acted appropriately under our policy." ".

Two weeks later, official notes from a meeting showed McCraw telling the captains, "No one is going to lose their job."

McCraw told CNN that he had been misquoted in the minutes and promised that "no one has a pass."

Elizondo, at right in his new UCISD uniform, declined to speak to CNN.

He said he would release all the information when he could, but the local district attorney has asked him not to do so until criminal investigations are complete, a process he has acknowledged could take years.

Prosecutor Christina Mitchell Busbee will charge anyone who has committed a crime at Robb Elementary School, including law enforcement officers, she said.

DPS was contacted by CNN, who declined to comment for this article.

A coalition of news organizations, including CNN, is suing DPS over records related to the investigation that have been withheld from the media and the public.

So far, the only person known to have lost his job in the response to the shooting has been School Police Chief Pedro "Pete" Arredondo, who was fired by the school board in August.

Arredondo became the figurehead for the failed response, though he said he did not consider himself the incident commander and has called for his reinstatement.

A chilling appraisal

Elizondo earned a base salary of $59,715 at the DPS, according to a database compiled by The Texas Tribune, reflecting a 12% increase a year ago.

She joined the department in 2018.

His new salary is not known, but a job posting for a similar role has a lower salary range of $41,584 to $59,158.

  • The children who survived the Uvalde massacre are heartbroken that they were unable to save their friends.

    Their moms now worry about their future

That ad lists the mental and physical demands of the position, including the "ability to deal effectively with personal danger that may include sudden exposure to armed persons... under conditions of intense threat."

On May 24, while riding the school bus back to Robb Elementary School from the hospital, he told another officer, "Nothing can prepare you for what they brought us. It was horrible."

Later, he can be heard on body camera recordings talking to his classmates when someone asks if he had children in school that day.

The woman now wearing the school police uniform gave a forceful reply.

In his bloodstained DPS uniform, he said, "If my son had been there, I wouldn't have been out. I promise."

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Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2022-10-06

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