Texas newspaper Austin-American Statesman posted video footage online of police officers responding to the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde in May on Tuesday. At the time, 19 students and two teachers were killed. The police were later heavily criticized. She would have reacted too slowly. With faster intervention, she could have saved several lives.
The four-minute video shows 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos crashing his pickup truck and entering Robb Elementary School with a semi-automatic rifle. The sound of AR-15 gunfire can then be heard for over two minutes.
A few minutes later, police officers appear. They take cover at the end of a hallway leading to the shooter’s two classrooms. Another 77 minutes pass before they storm the classrooms and engage him in a firefight.
A report commissioned by the Texas Department of Public Security earlier this month revealed that a police officer was able to shoot Ramos before entering the school. However, he hesitated as he waited for permission from a superior. There is nothing to see in the video footage.
The Austin-American Statesman did not reveal how she got the video, but published an accompanying message defending the decision to post it.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott and a state legislative committee investigating the shooting have called for the surveillance footage to be released to the public. Uvalde’s public prosecutor, on the other hand, had objected to the release.
Steven McCraw, head of the Department of Public Security, said on Twitter that he was “deeply disappointed” by the paper’s decision to publish the video. McCraw feels that relatives of the dead and wounded should have seen him first.