Sandy MaloneBy Sandy Malone and Holly Matkin
Uvalde, TX – Security video from the hallway of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde showed police in tactical gear stacked in the hallway for a long time outside the classroom where the gunman was barricaded before they attempted to storm the room and rescue children(video below).
Security video from outside the school showed the gunman crashed his vehicle across the street from Robb Elementary at 11:28 a.m. on May 24 and then opened fire on two men who started to approach the crash scene a minute later.
A teacher who heard the gunfire called 911 at 11:31 a.m. and at 11:32 p.m., the gunman began firing at the outside of the school from the parking lot, the video showed.
“Get down!” the teacher can be heard screaming at students in the background of her 911 call.
“Get in your rooms! Get in your rooms!” the teacher yelled as video showed the gunman was approaching the doors of the building.
At 11:33 a.m., the gunman opened the school’s door without issue and entered the school building with his rifle in his hands, security video from inside the hallway showed.
The video showed the gunman walked down the hallway of the elementary school at a leisurely pace, and then stopped between the doors of multiple classrooms.
A child approached the corner of the hallway and saw the gunman at 11:33 p.m.
Less than a second later, the gunman opened fire on a classroom, the video showed.
The child watching appeared to have gone unobserved by the gunman and turned and disappeared down the hallway as the gunman appeared to shoot his way into a classroom.
The video showed the gunman disappeared into the classroom and then it went dark.
The sound of gunfire can be heard for two-and-a-half minutes in the video, but the screams of the children were edited out before the footage was released.
The gunman fired more than 100 rounds inside the classrooms during that time, according to police.
Security video from the hallway showed the gunman was still shooting at 11:35 a.m. when the first officers entered the school building.
The video showed the first officers immediately went down the hallway and approached the classroom.
The officers took up positions in the hallway and then the gunman opened fire on them just before 11:37 a.m.
The video showed the officers took cover back at the end of the hallway and a standoff ensued.
Video showed officers – some of whom were in SWAT gear and had ballistic shields – arrived in the building 15 minutes later at 11:52 a.m.
The officers stacked up in formation at the end of the hallway but did not go down the hallway toward the classrooms, the video showed.
Video showed the officers were still standing at the end of the hallway at 12:21 p.m. when the gunman started shooting again.
Four more shots were heard and then less than a minute later, the video showed the officers headed down the hallway in formation, weapons drawn, and took up positions outside the classrooms.
But the video showed the law enforcement officers did not do anything to make entry or affect a rescue for another 28 minutes.
At 12:30 p.m., video showed one of the law enforcement officers who was waiting at the end of the hall stopped to apply hand sanitizer form a pump on the wall, giving the entire scene a bizarre feel.
It wasn’t until 12:50 p.m. that the video showed officers stormed the classroom and fatally shot the gunman.
By then, nineteen children and two teachers were dead.
During a hearing before the Texas Senate Committee in June, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Steve McCraw characterized the law enforcement response to the massacre as “an abject failure,” CNN reported.
“There’s compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary was an abject failure and antithetical to everything we’ve learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre,” Director McCraw said.
“Three minutes after the subject entered the west building, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the subject,” he continued. “The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering room 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.”
Director McCraw has placed blame for the delayed law enforcement response to the massacre squarely on the shoulders of Uvalde Consolidated Independent Schools District (UCISD) Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who the director alleged was the “on-scene commander.”
Chief Arredondo has said he believed he was in the role of a front-line responder and that someone else was commanding the larger police response to the situation.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin expressed extreme frustration over the “lies,” “misstated information,” and “leaks,” released by some state agencies since the school shooting occurred.
He said that everyone who waited in the school hallway before engaging the gunman need to provide answers about what transpired during the police response.
Watch the incident unfold in the video below. WARNING – Graphic Content:
Here’s the security cam footage from Uvalde. It doesn’t appear from this video that the police ever confront the shooter or even try to open the classroom doors. Infuriating. pic.twitter.com/wmOh4zAH9o
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) July 12, 2022
Holly Matkin
