New Uvalde Records Reveal Details About School Safety Concerns and Shooters Behavioral Issues
by Lomi Kriel, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and Alex Nguyen and Paul Cobler, The Texas Tribune ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as theyre published. This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues. Records released this week provide more details about campus safety concerns raised before the deadly 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and include some surviving teachers accounts that school leaders didnt check on them after they were injured and traumatized.The documents from Uvalde County and the school district also indicate that the 18-year-old shooter had behavioral and attendance issues before he dropped out of high school, and that his mother had told sheriffs deputies that she was scared of him.The county and Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District released the materials nearly 12 gigabytes as part of a settlement agreement in a yearslong lawsuit that news organizations, including ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, brought against state and local governments.The records reinforce the failure of law enforcement agencies to more quickly confront the gunman, who killed 19 students and two teachers in the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. ProPublica and the Tribune previously found that officers wrongly treated the shooter as a barricaded subject, rather than an active threat, and waited 77 minutes to confront him. No officer took control of the response, which prevented coordination and communication between agencies.The Texas Department of Public Safety, which dispatched more than 90 officers to the school, has appealed a separate judges order to release hundreds of videos and investigative files to the news organizations that sued for access. The agencys effort to slow the release of information continues to draw criticism from families of the victims, teachers and the former mayor, who is now a Republican state lawmaker. Its important so that the families can begin to heal, so that the families can begin to trust, so they begin to have some sort of closure, said Jesse Rizo, whose 9-year-old niece, Jackie Cazares, was killed during the May 24, 2022, massacre.Rizo, now a school board member who voted to release the agencys records, added, It will never be complete closure, but some sort of closure, and rebuilding that trust in law enforcement.The news organizations will continue to fight for release of the DPS records, said Laura Prather, a media law chair for Haynes Boone who is representing the outlets.Law enforcement experts largely regard the Uvalde shooting response as among the worst in American history. A U.S. Justice Department report in January 2024 affirmed many of the newsrooms initial findings and recommended that all officers in the country undergo at least eight hours of active shooter training annually.Three years is already too long to wait for truth and transparency that could prevent future tragedies, Prather said.Two former Uvalde schools police officers were indicted on child endangerment charges last summer over how they responded to the shooting. That includes Pete Arredondo, who was the districts police chief during the shooting and has been widely faulted for the delay in confronting the gunman. Adrian Gonzales, a school police officer who responded to the shooting, also faces charges related to child endangerment. Both men have pleaded not guilty and did not respond to requests for comment this week.This week, Gonzales attorney filed a request seeking a trial outside of Uvalde, saying it would be impossible to gather a jury that would not view evidence through their own pain and grief. In a text, the attorney, Nico LaHood, maintained that Gonzales is innocent and wrote that there is no evidence for why he should be held to account for collective failures of law enforcement agents from nearly two dozen agencies.It begs to question why he is accused of these charges out of nearly 400 officers present, LaHood wrote.Arredondo has also previously asserted that he did nothing wrong on the day of the shooting.Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell, who is leading the criminal investigation, did not return requests for comment. Spokespeople for the school district and county also did not immediately respond. DPS spokesperson Sheridan Nolen wrote in an email that the agency followed its standard protocol in which it does not release records that will impact pending prosecutions.Former Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, now a GOP member of the state House, called it ludicrous that the news organizations had to launch a legal fight to obtain records. He added that DPS should also release its information so that the victims families could get much-needed answers.Maybe theres something in there that we can keep this from happening again, he said. This was a costly mistake, and so I believe everybody should just release their records and give these families not closure, but at least another piece of what went on that day.ProPublica and the Tribune previously published 911 calls that showed the increasing desperation of children and teachers pleading to be saved and revealed how officers fear of the shooters AR-15 prevented them from acting more quickly. In a collaboration with FRONTLINE that included a documentary, the newsrooms showed that while the children in Uvalde were prepared, following what they had learned in their active shooter drills, many of the nearly 400 officers who responded were not.The county documents include emails to and from Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco, but they reveal little about his offices response. Nolascos inbox was inundated with media requests, offers of assistance from other law enforcement agencies and emails from the public criticizing law enforcements 77-minute delay in confronting the shooter, according to the documents released Tuesday.Nolasco has faced criticism for his actions on the day of the shooting. He was the first officer to respond to the house of the shooter's grandmother, whom the gunman shot in the face before going to Robb Elementary. Law enforcement experts have questioned why Nolasco did not do more to identify the shooter immediately. Shortly after that, the sheriff arrived at the school but did not appear to take charge of the escalating situation. Several officers later told state investigators that they regarded the sheriff as the incident commander.Nolasco could not be reached for comment on Tuesday and has declined multiple interview requests from the news organizations over the course of more than two years. In an interview Nolasco gave to DPS days after the shooting that was later obtained by the news organizations, he offered few details while defending his role that day.A DOJ investigation into the flawed response last year mentioned Nolasco by name 37 times and noted that he specifically should also have assisted with coordinating the law enforcement personnel present and establishing a command post and unified command. Despite the controversy, Nolasco was easily reelected last year.None of the school district police officers were wearing body cameras that day because the district had not issued them the equipment, so no new video or audio was released. The body cameras the county released had already been obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune.I Tried to Stay Calm for My StudentsStill, the records released this week showed further glimpses into the disarray that day.In one school email sent three weeks after the shooting, a fourth grade teacher at Robb Elementary wrote to the district superintendent about how terrified she was during the shooting, as she tried to keep her students safe while bullets ricocheted around her.According to a state House committees investigation into the shooting, the teacher was in a classroom across the hall from the adjoining classrooms where the gunaman killed all of his victims and was barricaded.I fell on the floor and began knocking desks over onto my legs so I wouldnt make noise, but I couldnt block the students from bullets, she emailed the former district superintendent, who retired after the shooting. I told my students I loved them. I told them to stay quiet, and I told them to pray.ProPublica and the Tribune could not immediately reach the teacher. In her email, she told the superintendent she was convinced she was going to die.I physically sat almost laying myself on my students and in front of them to be sure I could block them from bullets, she wrote in an email. I knew I would die that day. I had shrapnel in my back from when he shot in my window. I had blood all over the back of me, but I tried to stay calm for my students.The teacher wrote about how much she loved her students and working for the district. But she also noted that no school officials ever reached out to her immediately after the shooting. She wrote that she and other staff were asked not to talk to the media.A month after the massacre, another fourth grade teacher who survived being shot finally felt ready to ask about what was happening to her classroom.Is it being packed up, if so what will happen with my personal belongings? Elsa Avila wrote in an email to the schools principal. The students had piatas they were working on, were those salvaged or did they get thrown away?Avila said in the email that it was hard to accept that she may never get answers to many of her questions about the shooting.So I guess I can start with answers about my classroom, she said.In a brief interview this week, Avila said school leaders did not reach out to her directly while she was in the hospital. She also said the district should have released records sooner and that she hopes other agencies will follow.Still, she said, the governments actions are lacking any follow up.There were hundreds of officers there, so, to me, it still does not make sense that they only charged two officers, she said. Will there ever be any true accountability from other agencies? Because more people would need to be held accountable, more agencies need to be held accountable than just the two officers that they charged.The new records also show that school administrators had been aware of long-standing issues with locks on campus doors. Multiple witnesses told the legislative panel that employees often left doors unlocked, while teachers would use rocks, wedges and magnets to prop open interior and exterior doors. The shooter was able to enter the school through an unlocked exterior door, according to the legislative investigation.According to emails released this week, administrators had met with the owner of a lock company to discuss purchasing automatic locks for the districts exterior doors a little less than a month before the shooting. Emails sent after the shooting showed cost estimates in the millions for installing new exterior doors, hardened windows, fencing and other security infrastructure.Students have not returned to Robb Elementary since the 2022 attack. Local officials announced plans to demolish the school in the months following the shooting. A new campus, Legacy Elementary School, is expected to open this fall, and the site of the abandoned school has been turned into a living memorial.Troubled HistoryThe school district documents also include previously withheld information about the shooter, Salvador Ramos. They show district officials raising alarms about him hitting another student, using sexual language and drawing inappropriate pictures.In an email, former Superintendent Hal Harrell noted that Ramos was routinely failing classes and barely attending school.Academic intervention plans recommended one-on-one tutoring and parent conferences, however it is unclear what actions district officials or Ramos guardians ever took. Intervention plans from the 2016-17 school year largely list behavior as the reason for intervention. Ramos eventually dropped out.Then, around three months before the shooting, a sheriffs deputy visited the teenagers home two days in a row following reports of physical and verbal disturbance between him and his family.His mother, Adriana Reyes, could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday. But, according to the records, she told the deputy that Ramos became angry and kicked the Wi-Fi modem after she turned off the internet connection. The deputy wrote in a report that the mother said she was scared of Salvador and wanted help.
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