Uvalde City Officials End Battle Over Shooting Records

By Lomi Kriel and Lexi Churchill, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica, and Zach Despart, Terri Langford and Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune

Police video, audio, texts and emails released Saturday by Uvalde city officials offer new details about the Robb Elementary school shooting while also largely reaffirming reporting about law enforcement’s failure to engage a gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers.

In one report, a Uvalde municipal police officer said that law enforcement had to rely on a parent to use bolt cutters to break the locks to the gated fence the shooter had scaled to enter the school. That same officer also indicated in his report that he overheard a female relative of the shooter discuss how he’d expressed suicidal thoughts the night before the May 24, 2022, massacre. And in a 911 call, the shooter’s uncle pleaded with police to speak to the teenager, saying he believed he could talk him down. The call, however, came six minutes after law enforcement killed the gunman.

Text exchanges between Uvalde officers also provide insight into their frustrations after Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw blamed local police in the days following the shooting.

[“Someone tell me what to do”]

A Texas House of Representatives report released two months later, by contrast, spread blame onto the scores of local, state and federal law enforcement officers — including McCraw’s at least 91 DPS troopers — who also responded to the scene and failed to take charge.

The day after McCraw’s public comments, Uvalde Police Lt. Javier Martinez, who was shot within the first few minutes of the response, said that he had received a call from U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican.

In a text detailing the conversation, Martinez said the senator told him McCraw “should NOT have done that.” Martinez said he told Cornyn that McCraw had “screwed us all” and that the local officers were all receiving death threats.

[“He has a battle rifle”: Police feared Uvalde gunman’s AR-15]

Cornyn’s spokesperson declined to comment, while McCraw did not immediately respond. An attorney for Martinez and the Uvalde police officers said that he was not aware of the text exchange. Martinez did not respond to a message inquiring about it.

Most other records released by the city, such as body camera footage and audio of 911 calls from children inside the classrooms, were detailed in previous reporting from The Texas Tribune, ProPublica and FRONTLINE after the news organizations independently obtained hundreds of hours of investigative material through a confidential source.

The Saturday release is the first major disclosure of documents by a government agency involved in the flawed response to the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. It was part of a settlement agreement in a lawsuit between the city and the news organizations. Three other government agencies — the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office — continue fighting not to release any records.

Former Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, who is now a Republican candidate for the Texas House, said in a phone interview Saturday that the other government entities in the lawsuit should follow the city’s example.

[A year before Uvalde shooting, gunman had threatened women, carried around a dead cat and been nicknamed “school shooter”]

“The only way we’re going to know what truly happened is for everybody to release their records, put them out there,” McLaughlin said. “Mistakes were made. There’s no denying that. Take your lumps.”

By now, law enforcement’s failures during the response to the Uvalde shooting are well documented, including the fact that officers wrongly treated the shooter as a barricaded subject, rather than an active threat, and failed to confront him for 77 minutes. No officer took control of the response, which prevented coordination and communication between agencies. According to records released Saturday, for example, a DPS aircraft official struggled to coordinate logistics for two helicopters, SWAT team members and the San Antonio Police Department because they couldn’t reach an incident commander.

The newsrooms published 911 calls that showed the increasing desperation of children and teachers pleading to be saved and revealed how officers’ fear of the shooter’s AR-15 prevented them from acting more quickly. In a collaboration with FRONTLINE that included a documentary, the newsrooms also showed that while the children in Uvalde were prepared, following what they had learned in their active shooter drills, many of the officers who responded were not.

The abandoned truck and one of of Salvador Rolando Ramos' rifles in a ditch near Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, where he entered and killed 19 students and two teachers on May 24, 2022. Credit: Courtesy of Pete Luna/Uvalde Leader-News

The U.S. Justice Department later published a report that heavily criticized the delayed response and said that some victims would have survived had officers followed their training.

According to the records released Saturday, Uvalde municipal police officer Bobby Ruiz Sr. said in an incident report after the shooting that law enforcement had to rely on a parent to cut a lock on the gates of a fence around the school. Once the gate was open, students and teachers began running toward the opening.

“I ran up along with two other male individuals in which we hurried the students and school staff behind cover,” the officer said.

Ruiz was then sent to the nearby house where the gunman lived with his grandparents. The teenager had shot his grandmother in the face and taken his grandfather’s truck to the school. Ruiz said that while at the house, he overheard a relative say they’d stayed up with the gunman the night before after he expressed a desire to die by suicide.

In one 911 call, the shooter’s uncle, Armando Ramos, urged police to let him speak with the shooter, confident he could persuade him to stop.

“Everything I tell him, he does listen to me,” a distraught Ramos said. “Maybe he could stand down … or turn himself in.”

But his nephew was already dead, killed minutes earlier by police after he emerged from a classroom closet and fired at them.

An attorney for the news agencies as well as the uncle of one of the children killed at Robb Elementary said information about the shooting — and law enforcement’s response — helps grieving relatives get closure and will better prepare authorities for future massacres. They pushed other agencies to follow the city’s move and release records.

Jesse Rizo’s 9-year-old niece Jackie Cazares was one of the fourth graders killed. He was elected to the Uvalde school board in May and has pushed the district to release information the news organizations have requested. He said the piecemeal nature the public releases is spurring residents to suspect government officials are involved in a cover-up.

Jesse Rizo, the uncle of Jacklyn Cazares, outside his home in Batesville on Oct. 20, 2022. Credit: Evan L'Roy/The Texas Tribune

“And then we begin to lose faith and trust,” he said. “And the longer that things get delayed getting made public, then the more of a lack of trust we have.”

Brett Cross, the father of 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, who was also killed that day, said that he is infuriated that the city released information to media organizations through the settlement without first notifying families. He demanded more documents be released.

“They need to show everything, the world, how this actually is,” Cross said. “This isn’t something that we can just turn off. The world gets to turn off the TV and walk away. We don’t get to. We have to live this daily.”

Two state district judges in Texas have ordered the county, DPS and the school district to release records related to the shooting. All three have appealed the decisions.

Left: Velma Duran, the sister of Irma Garcia, one of the two teachers killed in the Robb Elementary school shooting, confronts Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw after he finished testifying to the House Homeland Security and Public Safety committee hearing at the Texas Capitol in Austin on Feb. 28, 2023. “They stood around and enabled the shooter to obliterate my sister. You couldn’t recognize her,” Duran said to McCraw. “Look at me!” Right: Brett Cross speaks during an April 23, 2024 Uvalde City Council meeting addressing police consultant Jesse Prado’s report on the Robb Elementary School shooting. Credit: Evan L'Roy/The Texas Tribune | Kaylee Greenlee Beal for The Texas Tribune

Only the city has settled with the news organizations, saying in a statement Saturday that it wished to comply with the court order and end a legal battle.

DPS representatives and a school district spokesperson did not immediately return calls or emails Saturday. Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco said in a statement that the potential release of records was “under the purview” of the office’s attorney.

Only a handful of responding officers have been publicly disciplined and no trial date has been set for the two who were indicted by a grand jury in June. Those two men — Pete Arredondo and Adrian Gonzales — pleaded not guilty. An attorney for Gonzales called the charges “unprecedented.”

Uvalde city officials chose to release records against the longstanding wishes of District Attorney Christina Mitchell, who is preparing to prosecute those two school district officers, including the agency’s former chief, for alleged inaction. Mitchell has argued that releasing records will interfere with those cases.

Attorneys representing the news organizations have said there is no proof to support her claims and that agencies cannot withhold the records under state laws.

Laura Prather, a media law chair for Haynes Boone who represented the news agencies in the legal fight for the records, called the city’s release a “step toward transparency,” though she noted the legal battle continues.

“Transparency is necessary to help Uvalde heal and allow us all to understand what happened and learn how to prevent future tragedies,” Prather said.

Memorial crosses outside Robb Elementary in Uvalde on Jan. 18, 2024. Credit: Chris Stokes for The Texas Tribune

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/10/uvalde-school-shooting-records-release-lawsuit/.