After Uvalde school shooting, here are lawmakers’ key findings in investigative report

A Texas House fact-finding committee formed after the Uvalde school shooting found an uncoordinated law enforcement response; a school with a culture of keeping doors unlocked; and an inconsistent receipt of lockdown notifications by teachers stemming from poor internet and cellphone connection. The committee released a report with the findings on July 17.

The Uvalde attack was the second major school shooting in Texas in four years. In May 2018, 10 people were killed at Santa Fe High School near Galveston.

Here are some of the takeaways from the report.

Law enforcement failures

The report found there was not a law enforcement official on the school’s campus when the gunman went over a fence and headed to the school, but within minutes multiple law enforcement officers came to the scene. People near the scene were fast to alert law enforcement to a “vehicle accident, a man with a gun, and shots fired near the Robb Elementary campus.”

“After entering through the unlocked west door, the attacker had about three minutes in the west building before first responders arrived at the building, including approximately two and a half minutes during which the attacker is estimated to have fired over 100 rounds,” the report reads.

Initial responders tried to breach the classrooms where they believed the gunman was, but were met with gunfire, according to the report. Momentum was lost when the situation was treated as as one involving a “barricaded subject” rather than an active shooter, the report reads.

The report found that there wasn’t a clear incident commander on the scene. That person was supposed to be the district’s police chief, Chief Pete Arredondo, who has been been placed on leave. He told the House committee he did not consider himself the incident commander.

When there were multiple officers on the scene, Arredondo did not “assume his preassigned responsibility of incident command, which would have entailed informing other officers that he was in command and also leaving the building to exercise command, beginning with establishing an incident command post,” according to the report.

Hundreds of law enforcement officials would eventually arrive to the scene over the next hour, but the report found that 73 minutes passed between first responders’ arrival and when they entered the classrooms.

The committee found there was not effective communication between 911 and the chief about communications from victims in two classrooms. Around 12:20 p.m., U.S. Marshals provided a rifle-rated shield, but it was about 30 minutes before one of the classrooms was breached, according to the report.

The committee did not receive evidence of whether a faster response would have saved lives or lessened injuries. It’s most likely those who died perished immediately, the report reads.

“However, given the information known about victims who survived through the time of the breach and who later died on the way to the hospital, it is plausible that some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait 73 additional minutes for rescue,” the report reads.

Unlocked doors and delayed notifications

The committee found several shortcomings when it came to the district and Robb Elementary School enforcing safety measures. They include:

• Bad Wi-Fi at the school may have delayed lockdown alerts. When the alert was sent, some teachers didn’t get it immediately because of a poor signal, not using a phone app for notifications or not carrying their phone. Intercoms weren’t used to let people know about the lockdown, according to the report. The teacher in a room where people were shot was among those who didn’t get timely notification.

• The committee found that the school had “reoccurring problems with maintaining its doors and locks,” including a known faulty lock on the door to a classroom where people were shot. Exterior doors were often propped open and interior doors left unlocked. An exterior door used by the gunman was unlocked and a classroom door he entered was likely unlocked, according to the report.

In late July, the school’s Principal Mandy Gutierrez pushed back on some of the committee’s findings, including the finding that Wi-Fi kept some school personnel from getting the alerts, according to the Texas Tribune. She maintained that the door to the classroom entered by the gunman does lock and said she was trained not to use the campus PA system in active shooter situations. Gutierrez had been suspended with pay but was reinstated, according to the Associated Press.