Contains footage some readers may find distressing
The full footage shows officers in the school hallway for almost an hour and 20 minutes as the gunman remained in the classroom
Video footage has been released from inside the Uvalde school where a gunman murdered 19 children and two teachers, showing police retreating from the classroom he was in.
The footage was recorded in a hallway of the school, and shows officers arriving at 11:36 a.m. May 24, three minutes after 18-year-old Salvador Ramos entered the school.
Police can be seen approaching the door outside the classroom Ramos was in. But when the teenager begins firing outside the classroom, officers retreat and look for cover in the hallway.
Over the next hour, reinforcements arrive in the hallway. Then, at 12:21 several officers in tactical gear approach the classroom. However it isn’t until almost half an hour later at 12:50 that they attempting to apprehend Ramos once more.
One officer is even seen taking the time to sanitize his hands.
The footage was obtained and edited by the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE-TV of Austin. In an editorial on Tuesday, the American-Statesman said it decided to publish the video to “continue to bring to light what happened at Robb Elementary, which the families and friends of the Uvalde victims have long been asking for.”
The 77-minute recording has been edited down to a three-minute summary of the key moments, which you can see below.
https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1546955421243478016
Texas governor Greg Abbott said last week that the footage “needs to be released” to show “exactly what happened” inside the school.
Officers and the police force had been criticised for allegedly being slow to respond to the incident. Footage from outside the elementary school on the day of the tragedy showed parents pleading with police to go into the school.
WATCH: An officer wearing a ballistic vest found ample time during the Uvalde school shooting to squirt hand sanitizer from a dispenser and rub his hands together (12:30 PM timestamp, well before the gunman was killed). pic.twitter.com/hqUnUnUlvD
— Mia Cathell (@MiaCathell) July 12, 2022
But Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw reacted furiously to the footage being published, saying that the families of the victims should have been the first to see it before it was made public.
In a statement, he said: “I am deeply disappointed this video was released before all of the families who were impacted that day and the community of Uvalde had the opportunity to view it. Those most affected should have been among the first to see it.
He said that the video did provide “horrifying evidence” that the police response to the shooting was an “abject failure.”
“In law enforcement, when one officer fails, we all fail,” he added.
Related links:
- More than 700 people shot dead in the US since the Texas school shooting
- The school children killed in Texas shooting will be buried in unique caskets free of charge
- Anonymous donor gives $175k to pay for Texas school shooting funerals
