Austin, Texas-
Surveillance video of the hallway at Robb Elementary School where police waited as a gunman opened fire in a fourth-grade classroom will be shown to Uvalde residents this weekend, a Texas lawmaker who heads an investigation into the massacre of 21 people.
The 77-minute video, which authorities say ends before police finally stormed the classroom on May 24, contains no images of children. It has received renewed attention over the past week as anger mounts in Uvalde over an incomplete report on slow police response and calls for accountability seven weeks after the worst school shooting in Texas history.
Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Republican leading an investigation into the shooting, tweeted that the video and findings of a preliminary report will be shown Sunday in Uvalde to residents and distributed publicly soon after.
“We strongly believe that members of the Uvalde community should have the opportunity to view the video and hear from us before it is made public.” Burrows tweeted.
Nineteen children and two teachers were killed. Police waited more than an hour after the shooting began before confronting the gunman, who was killed by police.
Burrows said his committee has interviewed more than 40 people behind closed doors over the past few weeks, including law enforcement officials who were on the scene. He has advocated that the committee talk to witnesses in private to get more candor about what happened.
State police said last week that Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Busbee had objected to the release of the video. Busbee has not publicly addressed those claims and has not returned messages seeking comment.
But video alone won’t answer all the questions that remain, nearly two months later, about law enforcement’s response. Among them are how School Police Chief Pete Arredondo led the massive law enforcement response that involved numerous local, state and federal agencies.
State authorities have chosen Arredondo as the commander on the scene and said his mistakes delayed police killing the gunman. However, Arredondo told the Texas Tribune that he did not consider himself in charge of the operations and that he assumed someone else had taken control of the police response. He did not have a police radio at the time.
The roles of ranking officers on the scene from other agencies, including the Texas Department of Public Safety, remain unclear. Local officials in Uvalde have accused state police of repeatedly publishing inaccurate information about the shooting while downplaying the role of their own police officers.
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Associated Press writer Jake Bleiberg in Dallas contributed to this report.