Last Updated on July 13, 2022
Newly released school video footage recorded of the Uvalde massacre shows that heavily armed police officers were cowering in a hallway as a gunman executed schoolchildren behind a closed classroom door. As gunshots and the screams of children could be heard inside the classroom, authorities retreated, waiting for 77 minutes before finally intervening and taking out the gunman.
The surveillance footage, released by The Austin American-Statesman, was recorded inside Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School on May 24th, when mass shooter Salvador Ramos entered the building and murdered 21 people – 19 children and 2 of their teachers. The paper released two versions of the footage online. One is a full-length version, and the other is a 4-minute abbreviated version, including a chronological reporting of the events. In both videos, it is clear that police waited for over an hour before engaging the shooter, all as gunfire and the screams of children could be heard from the hallway.
After a vehicle accident is caught on outdoor school surveillance cameras, Ramos is seen firing three shots at men who tried to investigate the accident before turning his gun on the school building. As can be heard in a recording included in The Statesman’s report, Uvalde-area 911 had been notified of the accident and subsequent shooting, and law enforcement began responding to the scene.
The gunman is then seen on camera entering the school building while he flips his hair. Moments later, he “fires his AR-15 inside two classrooms for two and a half minutes,” The Statesman reports.
Minutes after that, as seen in the video, police enter the school building and set down the same hallway the gunman had. When gunshots ring out once again from inside a classroom, the officers retreat back down the hallway, where they remain for over an hour, along with their reinforcements. All the while, according to widespread reports, parents were outside hearing the gunfire for themselves and begging the police to do something to stop it. One of them, a mother, was even handcuffed by police before she got free and rescued her kids herself, she says.
“Officers retreat to the hallway and take cover after shots were fired by the gunman,” The Statesman’s video report says. “More heavily armed officers continue to arrive, some with ballistic shields…Still, no rescue attempt happens,” the video report continues, displaying a clock showing that a whopping 36 minutes had passed at this point since the police had first entered the school.
48 minutes after police entered the school, with a massive collection of officers that appears to include federal agents milling about the hallway of Robb Elementary school, more shots are fired, and police appear to begin moving down the hallway to begin a stand-off outside the classroom door.
77 minutes after the shooting began and police responded, “officers breach the classroom door and kill the gunman,” the video report says, as gunfire can be heard in the audio.
The Uvalde police response was worse than a failure. They waited 77 minutes before they engaged the shooter. Video is horrifying. I carry a gun because I never want to die waiting on someone else. Teachers must be allowed the same right to protect students!pic.twitter.com/xBHKWLBfi0
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) July 12, 2022
Related: Uvalde School Police Held Active Shooter Drill Just Two Months Before Massacre
READ MORE: Uvalde Police No Longer Cooperating with State Probe Into Shooting
Watch the footage in its entirety below:
