A YEAR SINCE UVALDE AND QUESTIONS ARE UNANSWERED
A year has passed since the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas — and still, the public doesn’t know the whole story.
We know that more than 375 local, state and federal officers took more than an hour to kill the gunman who entered a fourth grade classroom with an AR-style rifle. We know that the medical response was so disjointed that none of the available helicopters carried victims directly to the hospital; that a school bus with no medics on board transported six students, including one who was seriously wounded; that several victims dragged from the building conscious or with a pulse nonetheless did not survive. We know that authorities in the days after the shooting gave conflicting, sometimes inaccurate accounts of what happened. We know that 19 children and two teachers are dead.
This information has come in part from a 77-page report by the Texas House of Representatives. Some of it has come from a report by researchers at Texas State University, and still more has come from the media. But pieces are still missing, including details that could reconcile the inconsistencies among accounts. The Texas Department of Public Safety, whose Texas Rangers probed the tragedy, has a comprehensive set of records, from 911 calls to ballistics reports to body-camera footage, that could finally explain why what went wrong went so desperately wrong. Yet officials are refusing to release them — and a consortium of news organizations, including The Post, has filed a lawsuit to force their disclosure.
Meanwhile, the city of Uvalde — also under suit by a consortium of news organizations including The Post — blames its own failure to offer answers in part on an inability to get key information from the state authorities.
Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell has said in a court filing that disclosing the records could jeopardize any criminal charges she might seek in response to the Texas Rangers’ investigation after “ample time” to review the case. This has been the
Department of Public Safety’s excuse for keeping secrets. But according to the department itself, the investigation has already ended, and it’s unclear what harm the disclosure of these materials would actually do. The district attorney also says the victims’ families agree with her decision, yet the vast majority of them are refuting that claim.
How much time is needed, really? Twelve months without answers for the families of those killed — answers that could show the community whom to hold accountable for their grief as well as possibly spare other families the need to grieve — already seems like more than enough.