Bodycam videos during Uvalde school shooting show disastrous police response

At first, some of the police officers who’d raced to Robb Elementary School thought the gunman was holed up in an office. “Male subject is in the school, on the west side of the building,” Uvalde police Sgt. Daniel “Corn” Coronado said into his radio at 11:41 a.m. May 24. “He’s contained. We got multiple officers inside the building at this time. We believe he’s barricaded in one of the offices. Male subject is still shooting.” As the facts became clearer, the horror intensified. At 11:43 a.m. — 13 minutes after the shooter, dressed in black and toting a black backpack and assault-style rifle, walked into the school through an unlocked door — a male officer said over police radio that he was in a classroom.

“The classroom should be in session right now,” he said. “The class should be in session ... Mrs. (Eva) Mireles.” “Oh no, oh no,” Coronado said nearly under his breath, as heard in a video recording from the police body camera he wore that day. At 12:11 p.m., an emergency dispatcher’s voice crackled over the radio, alerting officers that a boy had called 911 from one of the fourth-grade classrooms where the shooter, Salvador Ramos, 18, carried out his rampage. “Child is advising he is in a room full of victims,” the dispatcher said. “Full of victims at this moment.” Yet police — who were gathered at both ends of the hallway in front of Rooms 111 and 112, where Ramos gunned down 19 students and two teachers and wounded 17 others — wouldn’t enter one of the classrooms and kill the shooter for an additional 39 minutes. On July 17, the city of Uvalde released nearly 3½ hours of video from city police body cameras. The stream of recordings came only hours after a special Texas House committee investigating the massacre issued a report that condemned the law enforcement response as a jumble of missed opportunities and unlearned lessons from past mass shootings. The recordings — from seven Uvalde officers’ body cameras — show officers anxious, frustrated or confused by conflicting information. One officer had to temporarily leave the building to do breathing exercises. Several frantically searched for a master key for Room 111’s door, which apparently was unlocked.