The report states that police officers did not prioritize safety over saving lives.
‘Systemic failures’ and poor leadership led to the high death toll in the school shooting in the town of Uvalde, Texas, legislators have concluded in a report published on Sunday.
A gunman aged 18 opened fire on the Robb Elementary school in Robb, Texas, May 24, shooting 21 people and 19 children.
Most of the victims died instantly, but it’s likely that some who succumbed to their wounds on their way to hospital could’ve survived if the police had acted swiftly and not waited for reinforcement for 73 minutes, the Texas House of Representatives said in its report.
“Law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active-shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety,”The 77-page paper was read.
During the course of investigation, the committee “found systemic failures and egregious poor decision making,”The legislators added, ” “the void of leadership could have contributed to the loss of life as injured victims waited over an hour for help, and the attacker continued to sporadically fire his weapon.”
Yet “an obvious atmosphere of chaos,” the better-trained officers from other federal and state law enforcement agencies didn’t offer any advice or specific assistance to the local police, who were in command of the scene, but turned out unprepared for the responsibility, the report found.
It was 376 officers present on the scene, but the attacker managed to fire about 100 of his 142 shots before anyone entered the building.
They also criticised the lawmakers “regrettable culture of noncompliance by school personnel,”They were violating regulations by leaving exterior and interior doors open. An armed individual could easily gain entry to a school in order to attack those inside.
According to the newspaper, another reason was the failure of communications.
Children inside the classrooms where the shooting had unfolded phoned 911, but the law enforcers in charge of the operation at the school weren’t informed about those emergency calls, being unaware that “that students and teachers had survived the initial burst of gunfire.”
“Nobody in command analyzed this information to recognize that the attacker was preventing critically injured victims from obtaining medical care,”Let the document be read.
The inquiry was founded on 33 interviews with witnesses, and 39 informal conversations with representatives of security agencies.
“If somebody failed to exercise their training, if somebody knew there were victims in there being killed or dying and did not do more, I believe those agencies will have to find accountability for those officers,” Burrows said.
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