UVALDE, Texas (NewsNation) — Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin refiled a lawsuit against District Attorney Christina Mitchell, accusing Mitchell of hiding evidence surrounding the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.
Mitchell has led the criminal investigation into the shooting as well as the police response to the massacre. Mitchell had told the San Antonio Express-News she is still pouring over evidence from the case but hopes to present her case by the end of the year.
McLaughlin has called for Mitchell’s resignation, telling NewsNation the district attorney has blocked Uvalde investigators from information around the investigation.
It’s the second time McLaughlin has filed the lawsuit against the DA, accusing her of a cover-up.
“We didn’t want to file this lawsuit a second time. We tried everywhere in the world to work this out,” McLaughlin said.
A week ago, it was revealed Mitchell had two investigators at the site the entire time of the massacre. McLaughlin said this hadn’t been disclosed prior and the city even hired an independent professional to do a thorough investigation of the city’s officers and policies.
But McLaughlin says Mitchell has blocked his team’s investigation from the start, despite false belief the two agencies would work together on the investigation. McLaughlin and his investigators even signed an NDA with the DA’s office in the event of receiving sensitive information from Mitchell’s team. Also, McLaughlin’s team agreed if the third-party investigator found any criminal wrongdoing, he would bring it to Mitchell.
“We’ve been blocked time after time. She has given us some information, but she just won’t give us the final pieces that our investigators requested,” McLaughlin said.
He said he could not figure out what the problem was with Mitchell and why she was withholding information about the case.
“Look, every agency there has to be accountable that day,” the mayor said. “We just need to lay the cards on the table. There’s no question that there was a failure that day on the leadership of law enforcement, and we need to figure out what went wrong and how it went wrong.”
McLaughlin said Mitchell has yet to hand over the hallway video from the school during the 77 minutes it took for law enforcement to take down the shooter. He says even though he received a letter telling them they could have access to it, Mitchell still hasn’t given it to them.
McLaughlin also said Mitchell is withholding bodycam footage of the officers at the school that day. The mayor is asking for it to examine what the interactions were during the massacre and what the communication looked like.
The mayor explained his investigators need all the pieces in order to make a final conclusion to the investigation.
And some of the parents of the victims share the same frustrations, the mayor said.
“We can never imagine the pain that these parents felt losing their child. I mean, it’s horrendous,” he said.
But McLaughlin said right now, the wound is still open and every time something gets delayed, it’s like pouring salt in the wound.
“The families need answers. Our community needs answers,” McLaughlin said.
NewsNation has reached out to Mitchell and the DA’s office for comment on the lawsuit. She has yet to respond to the request.