Damning Report on Uvalde School Massacre Calls Out 'Systemic Failures' and 'Egregiously Poor' Decisions

Newly released surveillance footage showed the scene inside Robb Elementary School during the 77-minute attack in Uvalde, Texas. 

The shooter, who reportedly had never fired a weapon before that day, walked into room 111 through a door with a lock that had been broken for months. 

Today's Quick Start Podcast: Stunning Uvalde Report: 396 Officers at School

Most of the 142 rounds fired inside the building occurred before any first responder ever set foot inside.

But a scathing 77-page preliminary report from the Texas state House found that while there was a small army of law enforcement responders at the school that day, there were failures on every level. 

State Representative Dustin Burrows (R), the Committee chair said, "If there's only one thing that I can tell you is, there were multiple systemic failures."

While 376 officers responded to the shooting, most of them from federal and state agencies, no one established a command post, leading to confusion, miscommunication, and delay.

"If you know there is active shooting, active killing going on, or somebody is dying, the standard is you have to continue to do something to stop that killing or stop that dying," Burrow said.

The report blamed "egregiously poor decision-making" for police inaction. It noted that those officers who wanted to enter the building were, according to Burrows, "either denied access to the building or told misinformation. Some were even told false information."

City officials released police bodycam footage in an effort to provide what they called "further" and "necessary" context.

Uvalde Police Officer Eduardo Canales, injured by gunfire, is heard urging others to go in, "We gotta get in there, he keeps shooting."

The report concluded, "Law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety."
 
Some families of victims were there to receive the report, including the father of Uziyiah Garcia, who was killed.
                
"Whatever I see in this report is not going to bring my son back, but we need to prevent it so that somebody else won't lose their son, their daughter, their kids," Sergio Garcia said.

The report also concluded that it's not certain but possible that some of the 19 children and 2 teachers killed might be alive today if they had not had to wait 73 additional minutes to be rescued.