Uvalde families left wondering why officers who failed them weren't named in DOJ report

UVALDE — It took 604 days and a 575-page report from the U.S. Department of Justice to finally settle what the families of the 19 students and two teachers killed by a gunman at Robb Elementary always knew: the botched response by law enforcement, compounded by an unjustified 77-minute delay, cost lives.

"Had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news conference Thursday morning at the Herby Ham Community Center in Uvalde.

From the day of the massacre — May 24, 2022 — the victims' families have wanted to know if their son, daughter, sister or brother could have survived if authorities had immediately entered the classroom, confronted the shooter and neutralized him, as has been standard protocol since the deadly Columbine shooting in 1999.

Garland answered that question Thursday.

"The families of the victims and survivors deserved more than incomplete, inaccurate and conflicting communications about the status of their loved ones," he said. "This community deserved more than misinformation from officials during and after the attack.

"Responding officers here in Uvalde — who also lost loved ones and who still bear the emotional scars of that day — deserved the kind of leadership and training that would have prepared them to do the work that was required."

The attorney general traveled to the close-knit town of about 15,000 residents Wednesday, a day before the Department of Justice's released its comprehensive report examining the mass shooting — which spanned from how an 18-year-old was able to massacre 21 people to law enforcement officer's epic failure in responding to the attack.

'Failure': DOJ's scathing Uvalde school shooting report criticizes law enforcement response

Several of the victims' family members have commended Garland for his empathetic approach and for the depth of his office's inquiry — the most sweeping investigation to date. But, 20 months after the attack, the families remain with many unresolved concerns.

"The families didn't need a 400- or 500- page government report to tell them that law enforcement failed them," Josh Koskoff, a lawyer representing 17 families whose children were wounded or killed, told reporters. "The questions that were not answered in this report are significantly more important than those that were."

Among the top questions families were left asking are about individual police officers and how they responded to the tragedy. The exhaustive list of first responders' failures only named the highest-ranking officials, something Garland said was customary for Department of Justice reports.

"I don't understand why they are allowed privacy," said Kimberly Mata-Rubio, an activist and former mayoral candidate whose daughter was killed in the shooting. "My child, these children, they are named in this report because they are dead. Everybody should have been named."

While some officers have been fired, many remain employed — a fact that also haunts those affected by the shooting, said Brett Cross, whose son Uziyah "Uzi" Garcia was killed.

"Because the DOJ stamp is on this, maybe y'all will start taking us seriously now instead of telling us to move on, telling us to sweep it under the rug and not knowing a damn thing about it," he said, addressing community members in Uvalde. "It's hard enough … to walk into an H-E-B and see a cop that you know was standing there while our babies were murdered and bleeding out."

More: Read the full 500-page Uvalde shooting report released by US Department of Justice

Cross and other family members also used the news conference Thursday to criticize Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell's refusal to release public records that could lead to criminal charges against some officers.

"I also hope this lights a fire under the district attorney's a-- because we know that she has not done a damn thing, and we refuse to accept that," he said. "Do your job."

The families and Koskoff emphasized that they are fighting for stronger gun regulations, which the report did not address. Koskoff said the gunman ordered 60 thirty-round magazines and more than 1,700 rounds of ammunition to his home when he was 18 years old, but that he has not seen investigations into how he was able to do that.

"Nobody can fault the attorney general for his commitment to this or his concern for the families. It's very moving," he said. "But ... the attorney general wouldn't be here, the families wouldn't be here … I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn't be here, if Congress had just listened to the Sandy Hook families, if they had listened after Parkland."

More: How a false tale of police heroism in Uvalde spread and unraveled

"You know who would still be here?" he added, his hands shaking, as he read all 19 of the children's names.

Oscar and Jessica Orona, whose son Noah was among the 17 wounded children who survived the attack, are looking forward to a time when mass violence is not the public's primary association with Uvalde. Noah, now 11, spent eight days in the hospital after being shot in the back, and they say it has been a long struggle.

“We’re trying to get some semblance of normalcy, not that we’ll ever get there, but as normal of a life as possible,” Oscar Orona said.

Statesman staff writers John C. Moritz, Manny Garcia and Tony Plohetski contributed reporting.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: DOJ report on Uvalde shooting doesn't answer key questions, families say