As police waited outside Khloie Torres’ classroom in Uvalde, Texas, she made a series of 911 calls pleading for help. She whispered into the phone that there were “a lot” of bodies and told the operator, “Please, I don’t want to die. My teacher is dead. Oh, my God.”
At some point the dispatcher asks Khloie if there are many people in the room with her.
“No, it’s just me and a few friends. A lot of people are gone,” she says, pausing briefly.
Calls from Khloie and others, as well as bodycam footage and surveillance video of the May 24, 2022, shooting at Robb Elementary School, were included in a massive collection of audio and video recordings released by Uvalde City Council on Saturday following a lengthy legal battle.
The Associated Press and other news organizations filed suit after authorities initially refused to release the information. The massacre, which left 19 students and two teachers dead, was one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.
The delayed police response to the shooting was widely condemned as a massive failure: Nearly 400 police officers waited more than 70 minutes before confronting the gunman in a classroom full of dead and injured children and teachers. Victims’ families have long sought accountability for the slow police response in the south Texas city of about 15,000 residents, 80 miles west of San Antonio.
Among those killed was Brett Cross’s 10-year-old nephew, Uziyah Garcia. Cross, who raised the boy like a son, was angry that relatives were not told the documents would be released and that it took so long for them to become public.
“If we thought we could get everything we want, we would ask for a time machine to go back … and save our children, but we can’t. So all we ask for is justice, accountability and transparency, and that’s what they refuse to give us,” he said.
Jesse Rizo, whose nine-year-old niece Jacklyn Cazares was killed in the shooting, said the release of the information on Saturday reignited simmering anger because it showed what law enforcement is “waiting and waiting and waiting.”
“If they had broken in earlier, they might have been able to save some lives, including my niece’s,” he said.
The police response involved nearly 150 Border Patrol agents and 91 state troopers, as well as school and city police officers. While frightened students and teachers called 911 from classrooms, dozens of officers stood in the hallway, trying to decide what to do. Desperate parents gathered outside the building begged them to go inside.
The gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, entered the school at 11:33 a.m. He first opened fire from the hallway and then entered two adjacent fourth-grade classrooms. The first police officers arrived at the school minutes later. They approached the classrooms but then retreated when Ramos opened fire.
At 12:06 p.m., Uvalde police radio traffic was still focused on setting up a perimeter around the school and controlling traffic in the area, as well as the logistics of keeping track of those who had safely exited the building. They were having trouble setting up a command post, one officer tells his colleagues, “because we need the bodies to keep the parents out.”
“They are trying to assert themselves,” he says.
At 12:16 p.m., an employee of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the state law enforcement agency, called police and told them that a SWAT team was on the way from Austin, about 60 miles away. She asked for any information police could provide about the shooting, the suspect and the police response.
“Do you have a command post? Or where should our officers go?” asks the caller.
The police spokeswoman replied that officers were aware that there were several dead students in the elementary school and that others were hiding. Some of the survivors had been evacuated to a nearby building. She did not know whether a command post had been set up.
At 12:50 p.m., a tactical response team entered one of the classrooms and shot Ramos.
Among the criticisms in a US Department of Justice report published earlier this year was that there was “no urgency” to setting up a command center, which led to confusion among police about who was in charge.
Numerous federal and state investigations have revealed cascading problems in police training, communications, leadership and technology, raising questions about whether officers put their own lives above those of children and teachers.
Some of the 911 calls released were from frightened teachers. One described “lots and lots of gunshots,” while another sobbed into the phone as a dispatcher urged her to stay calm. “Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry!” the first teacher shouted before hanging up.
Just before reaching the school, Ramos shot and injured his grandmother in her home. He then took a pickup truck from her house and drove to the school.
Ramos’ distraught uncle made several emergency calls, begging to be put through so he could persuade his nephew to stop shooting.
“He listens to everything I tell him,” said Armando Ramos. “Maybe he could resign or do something to turn himself in,” he added, his voice breaking.
He said his nephew, who had been at his house the night before, stayed in his bedroom all night and told him he was upset because his grandmother was “annoying” him.
“Oh my God, please, please don’t do anything stupid,” says the man on the phone. “I think he’s shooting children.”
But the offer came too late, just as the shooting ended and police officers killed Salvador Ramos.
Two of the police officers who reported the incident now face charges. Former Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo and former school police officer Adrian Gonzales have pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of child abandonment and child endangerment. A suspended Uvalde State Police officer was reinstated to duty earlier this month.
In an interview with CNN this week, Arredondo said he believes he has been scapegoated and blamed for the botched law enforcement response.
Some of the families called for the indictment of additional officials and filed federal and state lawsuits against law enforcement agencies, social media, online gaming companies and the gun manufacturer that made the shooter’s rifle.
