Uvalde families request to join lawsuit against Texas DPS over mass shooting records
The families of some of the victims of a mass school shooting in Uvalde last year are asking a state District Court to allow them to join an ongoing lawsuit against the Texas Department of Public Safety for the release of critical public records related to the shooting.
The suit was filed by a coalition of 14 news organizations, including the American-Statesman’s parent company, Gannett, in August after the DPS turned down dozens of requests for records such as investigative reports, recordings and officer testimony.
“The reasons given for the withholding of the investigation … are without merit and unreasonable,” an attorney for the families, Thomas J. Henry, wrote in a plea for intervention to 261st District Judge Daniella DeSeta on Tuesday.
Speaking on behalf of a teacher and a student killed in the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School, Henry wrote that the families, and other injured and surviving children, “have a compelling need for the information that will override the need to keep the information withheld."
On May 24, a gunman entered Robb Elementary and fatally shot 19 children and two teachers. Police on the scene waited 77 minutes before they entered the classroom where the gunman was holed up and fatally shot him.
The families' plea comes just days after Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell, who joined the DPS’s defense last week, claimed in a court filing that “all of the families of the deceased children have stated … that they do not want the investigation of the Texas Rangers released until she has had ample time to review the case and present it to an Uvalde grand jury, if appropriate.”
Mitchell’s office declined a Statesman request for comment.
In court documents, attorneys for Mitchell and the DPS argued that the release of any records would interfere with the department’s investigation into law enforcement’s response to the shooting and the district attorney’s possible prosecution of people involved.
First Amendment attorney Laura Lee Prather, representing the coalition of media organizations, dismissed the argument as “a straw man” and “meritless” in court filings.
The plea for intervention filed by the victims’ families Tuesday automatically makes them parties to the suit, strengthening the coalition’s case for transparency, said Jim Hemphill, an attorney consulting the coalition on the case.
“This intervention demonstrates that it’s not just the media that is advocating for transparency. It’s the families of many of the victims as well,” Hemphill said.
DeSeta presided over the first hearing in the case at the Travis County Civil and Family Courthouse in Austin on March 8. No ruling has been made in the case.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Uvalde school shooting: Victims' families ask to join records lawsuit
