AUSTIN (KXAN) — The surveillance video showing the Robb Elementary School shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers contains the moment one Uvalde officer learned his wife had been shot, a Texas lawmaker said.
The video was leaked to the Austin American-Statesman days before victims’ families were set to watch the video for the first time.
The 77-minute video shows officers rushing into the school minutes after the gunman fires shots as he enters a classroom. The officers then run from the door after additional shots are fired.
It would be more than an hour before officers would breach the classroom door and kill the shooter.
The video also shows when one of the officers learns his wife, teacher Eva Mireles, was shot and dying, according to state Rep. Joe Moody.
“That’s my wife’s classroom,” an officer can be heard saying on the leaked video.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw described that moment and their findings during testimony in front of lawmakers in June.
“He tried to move forward into the hallway. He was detained, and they took his gun away from him and escorted him off the scene,” McCraw said.
McCraw also faced questions about why officers, including his own, did not advance and breach the classroom sooner.
“It is our policy to follow the on-scene commander. It is dangerous if you do not,” McCraw said during a June Senate hearing.
Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training at Texas State University released a report in early July criticizing the law enforcement response to the May 24 shooting. The report stated “when the officers were fired at, momentum was lost. The officers fell back, and it took more than an hour to regain momentum and gain access to critically-injured people.”
The leaked video shows most of the gunshots were fired inside the classroom before officers entered the elementary school. But, throughout the more than an hour officers were in the building, more gunfire was audible through the surveillance recording. Still, officers did not advance on the classroom door.
Instead, multiple officers stood at the end of the hallway with their rifles focused on the area just outside the classroom door where the shooter was located.
The leaked video by the Austin American-Statesman Tuesday included cellphone video, body-worn-camera video and surveillance video from outside the school.
The committee plans to release its report, which will include parts of the never-before-heard testimony given by the Uvalde Sheriff and Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo during closed-door sessions.