Texas DPS trooper arrived on scene of Uvalde school shooting earlier than previously known, body cam shows
Body camera footage released by the city of Uvalde last month shows a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper was on the scene outside Robb Elementary School just 2 minutes and 28 seconds after the gunman entered, a timeline earlier than previously known.
The department had only disclosed, in timelines and testimony, that the first state trooper entered the school hallway at 11:42 a.m., nine minutes after the gunman entered the school. But DPS had not stated when the trooper first arrived at the school itself.
The more specific timeline raises further questions about DPS's own transparency and role in the botched police response, even as the department leads the investigation into what happened. The body camera video was provided to CNN by Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, who has expressed his frustration with the department's investigation and accused DPS of a "cover-up."
The head of the largest police union in Texas said the new timeline raised serious questions about the department's trustworthiness.
"I don't know that we can trust them to do an internal investigation," Charley Wilkison, the executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, which represents some law enforcement officers in Uvalde, told CNN on Tuesday. "It would be best if the investigation were headed up by an outside independent source that the public can have total confidence in.
"I would say that DPS was fast to wash its hands, to point fingers and to make sure that the general public, particularly the elected officials, knew that they were spotless, blameless and that this was a local problem," he added.
The new reporting comes more than two months after an 18-year-old gunman entered the school, opened fire inside two adjoining classrooms and slaughtered 19 children and two teachers. Officers arrived on the scene minutes later, but after taking fire from the gunman, they retreated to a hallway, and the gunman remained inside the classrooms for a total of 77 minutes before a tactical unit forced their way in and killed him, according to a timeline from the public safety department.
The long delay contradicts a widely taught protocol for active shooter situations, which says that law enforcement should stop the gunman as fast as possible. Yet authorities have repeatedly offered conflicting timelines and muddled explanations as to what happened in that period.
In June, DPS Director Col. Steven McCraw called the law enforcement response an "abject failure" inÂ
testimony before the Texas Senate. He placed sole blame for the delayed response on the on-scene commander, Uvalde School Police Chief Pedro "Pete" Arredondo.
"The only thing stopping the hallway of dedicated officers from entering rooms 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children."
Arredondo has said he did not consider himself to be in command that day, but body camera videos and other documents undermine that claim and show him giving orders and conveying and receiving information. The school district's superintendent placed him on administrative leave in late June.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/02/us/texas-...index.html