DALLAS — As police waited outside Chloe Torres’ fourth-grade classroom in Uvalde, Texas, she pleaded for help on 911, whispering into the phone that there were “a lot” of dead bodies and pleading with the operator, “Please, I don’t want to die. My teacher’s dead. Oh, God.”
At one point, the dispatcher asked Chloie if there were many people in the room of the 10-year-old boy who ultimately survived.
“No, just me and a few friends. A lot of people are gone,” she said after a short pause.
Phone records, body camera footage and surveillance camera footage of Cloyer and other suspects during the May 24, 2022, shooting at Robb Elementary School were included in a massive collection of audio and video recordings released Saturday by Uvalde city officials after a lengthy legal battle.
After authorities initially refused to release the information, news organizations including the Associated Press sued. The massacre, which left 19 students and two teachers dead, became one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.
The delayed police response to the shooting has been widely condemned as a major failure. Nearly 400 officers waited more than 70 minutes before confronting the gunman in a classroom full of dead and injured students and teachers. Families of the victims have long called for accountability for the slow police response in the South Texas city of about 15,000 people 80 miles west of San Antonio.
Brett Cross’s 10-year-old nephew, Uzziah Garcia, was among those killed. Cross, who raised Garcia as his son, was outraged that the records were not made public and that it took so long for them to be released.
“If we thought we could get anything we wanted, we’d ask for a time machine to go back in time and save our children, but we can’t do that. So all we want is justice, accountability and transparency, and they refuse to give us that,” he said.
Jesse Rizzo, whose 9-year-old niece, Jacqueline Cazares, was killed in the shooting, said Saturday’s release of information showed law enforcement “waiting and waiting and waiting” and rekindled simmering anger.
“Maybe if they had broken through sooner some lives could have been saved, including my niece’s,” he said.
The law enforcement response included about 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents, 91 state police officers, school police, and city police. Dozens of officers stood in hallways trying to figure out what to do as terrified students and teachers called 911 from inside classrooms. Desperate parents gathered outside the building, pleading with officers to let them in.
A cross bearing the names of the shooting victims stands outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 26, 2022. Jay C. Hong/AP
The shooter, Salvador Ramos, 18, entered the school at 11:33 a.m., first opening fire in a hallway and then into two adjacent fourth-grade classrooms. The first responding police officers arrived at the school a few minutes later. They approached the classrooms but retreated when Ramos opened fire.
At 12:06 p.m., much of the Uvalde Police Department’s radio traffic was still focused on setting up a perimeter around the school, controlling traffic in the area, and tracking people who had safely evacuated the building. They were having trouble setting up a command post, one officer told a colleague, “because we need bodies to keep the parents out.”
“They’re trying to break in,” he says.
At 12:16 p.m., a Texas Department of Public Safety official called police to inform them that a SWAT team was on the way from Austin, about 162 miles away, and asked for any information police could provide about the shooting, the suspect, or the police response.
“Is there a command post? Or where should we send our officers?” the caller asks.
A police representative said officers knew several students were dead inside the school and others were still hiding. Some survivors had taken refuge in a nearby building. It was unclear whether a command post had been set up.
At 12:50 p.m., Special Forces entered one of the classrooms and shot and killed Ramos.
A Justice Department report released earlier this year criticised the “lack of urgency” in setting up the command centres, saying it was creating confusion within police departments over who would be in charge.
Multiple federal and state investigations have revealed cascading problems in law enforcement training, communication, leadership and technology, raising questions about whether officers prioritized their own lives over those of children and teachers.
Among the 911 calls made public were calls from terrified teachers, with one describing “lots of gunfire,” and another sobbing into the phone as the operator urged them to stay quiet, with the first yelling “Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry!” before hanging up.
Shortly before arriving at the school, Ramos shot and wounded his grandmother at her home, then left the home and drove to the school in his pickup truck.
Ramos’ distraught uncle tried to get his nephew to stop shooting, calling 911 multiple times and pleading with them to keep him on the line.
“Everything I say, he listens,” Armando Ramos said. “Maybe he can do something to resign or turn himself in,” he added, his voice trembling.
He said his nephew, who had been at home with him the night before, had been in his bedroom all night and said he was upset because his grandmother was “making too much noise.”
“Oh, God, please don’t do anything stupid,” the man said over the phone. “I think he’s shooting kids.”
But the offer came too late, just as the shooting ended and a police officer shot and killed Salvador Ramos.
Two of the officers who responded to the scene now face criminal charges. Former Uvalde Schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo and former school officer Adrian Gonzalez have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of child abandonment and child endangerment. The Uvalde Texas trooper who was suspended was reinstated to duty earlier this month.
In an interview with CNN this week, Arredondo said he believes he has been “scapegoated” for the failed law enforcement response.
Some family members have called for more police prosecutions and have filed federal and state lawsuits against police, social media, online gaming companies and the gun manufacturer that made the rifle used by the gunman.
