Texas School Shooting: Report Details 3 Missed Chances to Stop Gunman

DALLAS — A report released Wednesday details three missed opportunities to slow — or even stop — the Uvalde gunman before he entered Robb Elementary School, where he ultimately killed 19 students and two teachers in Texas’ deadliest school shooting.

The 26-page report by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University, commissioned by the Texas Department of Public Safety to assess the response by law enforcement authorities, contains the latest revelations in the efforts to unfold what happened May 24.

Law enforcement has been widely criticized for the response in Uvalde. Eighty minutes elapsed between the first call to 9-1-1 and police confronting the shooter, who fired at least 142 rounds, according to a timeline from DPS director Steve McCraw.

According to the report, the first in a long series of mistakes started outside the school.

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ALERRT said while a teacher closed an exterior door when the lockdown was announced, she did not check to see whether the door was locked. She also did not have the “the proper key or tool to engage the locking mechanism on the door.”

“Because it was not locked, the attacker was able to immediately access the building,” the report says.

However, even if the door was successfully locked, ALERRT noted it was a steel frame with a large glass inlay — which was not made of ballistic glass, meaning the suspect could have shot through it and opened the door regardless.

Second, the report says one of the first responding officers drove through the parking lot on the west side of the building “at a high rate of speed.” The gunman was in the parking lot as the officer drove by, but because he was going too fast, he missed the gunman entirely.

“If the officer had driven more slowly or had parked his car at the edge of the school property and approached on foot, he might have seen the suspect and been able to engage him before the suspect entered the building,” the report says.

The third opportunity occurred when a Uvalde police officer aimed his rifle at the gunman before he entered the school, but waited for permission from a supervisor to open fire. The officer did not hear a response and turned to get confirmation. When he turned back, the report says, the gunman was already inside.

“If any of these three key issues had worked out differently, they could have stopped the tragedy that followed,” the report says.

Uvalde school district officers underwent active-shooter training just two months before the massacre with a manual from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, the state agency that oversees all peace officers. The manual tells officers “a first responder unwilling to place the lives of the innocent above their own safety should consider another career field.”

Law enforcement officials across the state have agreed the decision not to confront the shooter sooner cost lives.

“The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from (entering rooms) 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children,” McCraw testified before the state Senate.

“The officers have weapons, the children had none,” he said. “The officers had body armor, the children had none. The officers had training, the subject had none.”

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