Video inside Uvalde school shows officer stopping for hand sanitizer and police fleeing gunman
Four excruciating minutes gathered from more than an hour of surveillance footage reveals law enforcement delays at the scene of the massacre
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Seventy-seven minutes of video footage assembled from the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, reveals the real-time assault after a gunman violently crashed a truck across the street then entered the school unimpeded, killing 19 children and two teachers, while law enforcement spent a painstaking hour waiting in the hallway as shots can be heard inside a classrrom.
A four-minute video assembled from footage obtained by the Austin American Statesman and KVUE-TV opens with surveillance footage from outside the school, as the gunman crashes a truck before firing three shots at two men on the street on 24 May.
The video also includes audio from a teacher on a 911 call saying “I cannot see him” and “the kids are running” before shots can be heard firing towards the school. The teacher yells out “get down” and get in your rooms”.
Footage from inside the school, after the gunman enters at 11.33am, reveals him pacing the hallway with a high-powered rifle. He releases his grip from the rifle with his left hand and brushes his hair aside.
A student on the other end of the hallway peers around a corner as the gunman walks down the hall. Seconds later, he unleashes a burst of gunfire into a classroom.
He fires his AR-15 rifle for two and a half minutes, according to the video. Law enforcement reported more than 100 rounds were fired.
Several police officers are then seen entering the school hallway roughly three minutes later, at 11:36am, according to the video, where they stand for roughly one minute.
Then, a burst of gunfire.
Officers at the far end of the hallway near the classroom where the gunman entered run back towards the other end of the hallway.
More heavily armed and armoured officers arrive and crouch alongside other officers roughly 19 minutes after the gunman entered the school. The gunman is still inside the classroom on the other side of the hallway.
Officers are carrying shields, wearing body armour, and wielding high-powered rifles, pointing towards the other end of the hall. No officers are moving towards the classroom.
Roughly 48 minutes after the massacre began, while the officers continue to stand or kneel in the hallway, the gunman can be heard firing four more rounds.
At one point, at around 12:30pm, an officer in ballistic gear can be seen dispensing hand sanitizer.
Seventy-seven minutes later, at roughly 12:50pm, officers breach the classroom and kill the gunman. More than a dozen officers, most of them heavily armed, can be seen in the hallway at that point.
The video – assembled from an investigative file that includes security video footage from a nearby funeral home, officers’ body camera footage, audio from 911 calls and officers who are speaking to one another in the hallway, and surveillance camera footage from a camera on the ceiling of the school’s hallway – underscores the severe lapse in law enforcements’ response, as families and bystanders were gathered outside the school pleading with officers to save their children.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw has identified school district police chief Pete Arredondo as the incident commander, who Mr McCraw has publicly said wrongly determined that the scenario involved a barricaded suspect, not an active shooter.
But the video shows multiple law enforcement agencies – including officers from the Uvalde Police Department as well as Texas Rangers and federal agents with US Border Patrol and the US Marshals Service – who stalled in their response to engage the gunman.
Mr McCraw testified at a recent Texas state Senate hearing that there were enough armed officers on the scene to stop the gunman within the three minutes after the shooting began.
The US Department of Justice has also opened a parallel investigation into the police response.
Release of the footage follows weeks of demands from victims’ families, survivors, the Uvalde mayor, Governor Greg Abbott and the media to better understand the failures that day, while prosecutors have cited the active investigation into the massacre in their refusal to release the footage.
Salvador Ramos, 18, fatally shot 19 children between the ages of nine and 11, as well as two fourth-grade teachers.
The massacre marks the deadliest school shooting since the 2012 killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children between the ages of six and seven were killed, along with six adult staff members.