The city of Uvalde has released new audio and video records of the tragic shooting at Robb Elementary School in 2022. The records show students and teachers begging police to enter and confront the shooter, while officers were outside struggling to establish a line of command.
The release, prompted by a lawsuit from the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations, includes 911 calls, text messages, body camera footage, and surveillance videos.
One of the records released is a 911 call from Khloie Torres, a fourth-grader who was trapped in the classroom with the shooter but survived. In the call, Torres can be heard pleading with the operator, saying, “Please, I don’t want to die. My teacher is dead. Oh my god.” When asked if there were others in the room, she replied, “No, it’s just me and a couple of friends. A lot of people are gone.”
The delayed response of law enforcement during the shooting has been widely criticized. On that day, 376 officers took more than 70 minutes to take down the shooter, leading to the deaths of 19 students and two teachers.
Another record is a 911 call from a teacher who begged police to “hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry.”
A report by the U.S. Department of Justice condemned the law enforcement’s lack of urgency and called the response “a failure that should not have happened.” The report detailed several missteps, including a “haphazard” initial response, delays in establishing a command post, and a failure to treat the situation as an active shooter incident.
“Perhaps if they were to have breached earlier, they would have saved some lives, including my niece’s,” Jesse Rize, whose 9-year-old niece Jacklyn Cazares was killed in the shooting, told the Associated Press.
In another 911 call, Armando Ramos, the uncle of the shooter, Salvador Ramos, pleaded with police to let him speak to his nephew. “Everything I tell him, he does listen to me,” Ramos said. “Maybe he could stand down or do something to turn himself in.”
“Oh my God, please, please, don’t do nothing stupid,” he added. “I think he’s shooting kids.” However, when he made the call, officers had already shot the gunman.
The records also include text messages between officers expressing concern for their safety following the widespread criticism of their delayed response.
Families of the victims have long called for accountability of police officers who failed to protect their children, and the newly released records have prompted anger.
“If we thought we could get anything we wanted, we’d ask for a time machine to go back … and save our children, but we can’t, so all we are asking for is for justice, accountability and transparency, and they refuse to give this to us,” Brett Cross whose 10-year-old nephew, Uziyah Garcia was killed, told the AP.
