Children's lives may have been saved if officers had responded differently to a gunman who opened fire at Robb Elementary School, the Justice Department said in its report on the 2022 mass shooting that killed 21 people, including 19 students.
Poor coordination, training and execution of active-shooter protocol contributed to a law enforcement response that can only be described as a "failure," the report said.
The 600-page findings describe a chaotic scene that should have triggered a number of coordinated responses by law enforcement officers who first arrived at the school. Instead, a dearth of leadership contributed to officers failing to recognize an active shooter and waiting far too long to engage the gunman.
As a result, 19 students and two teachers were killed. Seventeen others were injured.
"The resulting delay provided an opportunity for the active shooter to have additional time to reassess and reengage his deadly actions inside the classroom," the report said. "It also contributed to a delay in medical interventions with the potential to impact survivability."
The Justice Department said that there were at least 10 "stimulus events" over the span of more than an hour that could have driven law enforcement officers to take steps under active shooter protocols to "immediately stop the killing."
"During that period, no one assumed a leadership role to direct the response towards the active shooter, provide situational status to responding officers, establish some form of incident command, or clearly assume and communicate the role of incident commander," the report continued.
Disturbing new details outlined in the report reveal that authorities relayed incorrect information to some parents in the aftermath of the shooting about whether their children had survived or been killed.
Parents have long been frustrated by shifting stories and a lack of transparency about the response at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, and wary that the report would provide answers and the accountability they have sought for nearly two years.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland spent Wednesday in Uvalde visiting all 21 memorial murals, honoring the 21 people killed in the shooting. He also spent more than two hours with the families of those who were killed or injured, taking questions about the report.
Parents, teachers and victims' families raced for the report's release as officials warned it could retraumatize a community left bereft by the tragedy.
Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-old daughter, Jacklyn, was one of the 21 killed in the shooting, told NBC News he believes people need to be held accountable for the botched law enforcement response.
"Hopefully it does change things," Cazares said of the report. "It's gonna bring some light to the little failures. And unfortunately, this happened, had to happen to us for those lessons to be shared with somebody else."
Oscar Orona, whose son Noah was injured but survived the shooting, said he and his wife were pleased with what they heard from Garland in the family forum, but that Noah is still changed forever.
"He's not the same little boy that we left there that morning," Orona said. "He's a different person and dare I say he's experienced more than most men will ever experience in a lifetime. And he has seen stuff that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy."
The report builds on a scathing investigation by state lawmakers that found "systemic failures and egregiously poor decision-making" among the nearly 400 law enforcement officers that responded.
The Justice Department launched the review early last year at the request of Don McLaughlin, then the mayor of Uvalde, as distraught and outraged parents and families demanded to know why it took officers so long to enter the building and stop the shooter. The gunman had entered his former elementary school armed with an AR-15 rifle and killed the students and teachers. Seventeen other people were injured.
Video from the scene released days later showed parents in anguish, begging officers to charge into the school and save their children. They were outraged when, soon after the shooting, authorities announced that Uvalde police had responded within minutes. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at the time that it "could have been worse" had law enforcement officers not run toward the gunfire. He later said he had been "misled" about the response.
Sandra Torres, whose 10-year-old daughter, Eliahna, was killed, was among several members of victims' families who met with Garland on Wednesday evening. Earlier in the day, she said she was wary that the report would bring families some closure.
"I don't know what to expect," Torres said. "I don't know what they're going to have. The thing that I want the most is justice, accountability."
Law enforcement officers at the scene were harshly criticized for waiting more than an hour to confront the shooter. Their agencies and government officials further angered families by offering conflicting accounts of what unfolded that day and for failing to discipline responding officers. They also withheld documents and videos from the public that could have shed some light on events.
Pete Arredondo, then the chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department, received the most scrutiny for instructing responding officers to wait for more backup.
A Texas House committee that conducted its own investigation found that under the district's active shooter plan, Arredondo would have been the incident commander. Instead, he waited for more than an hour for additional law enforcement officers to arrive before entering the school.
He "did not assume his preassigned responsibility of incident command," the committee report said. Arredondo has said he did not consider himself to be the officer in charge.
Steve McCraw, the director of the state Public Safety Department, described the police response as an "abject failure" and criticized responding officers for not engaging with the shooter within minutes of having arrived on the scene.
Arredondo, whom McCraw named as the on-scene commander, was fired in August 2022 by the Uvalde school board. McCraw faulted Arredondo for treating the situation as one involving a barricaded subject rather than an active shooter.
The Justice Department collected more than 13,000 items for review and analysis, including policies, procedures and training materials from responding agencies; manuals; and hours of video, photos and interview transcripts.
The investigation is one of several. The review by McCraw's office led to the firing of one officer. A criminal investigation by the district attorney in Uvalde remains open.
"I'm not sure what information they have, but I hope this report details which officers did what so that our DA cannot run and hide and refuse to prosecute them," said Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son, Uziyah, was killed.
Jesse Rizo, the uncle of victim Jacklyn Cazares, said he hopes the Justice Department holds people accountable for the bungled response and provides missing details about what occurred while the gunman moved through Robb Elementary.
He said he has been hopeful before, only to be let down: "You hope for the best, and it always falls short."
Adam Martinez, whose 8-year-old son, Zayon, survived the shooting, said the boy still cannot sleep in his own room and is triggered by loud noises. Martinez, who started a podcast on which family members and residents can discuss their challenges and achievements since the shooting, has been one of the most vocal critics of law enforcement's response.
"To us, for somebody to get fired, that's what we would like," Martinez said. "Out of this case, I don't think that's going to happen."