Unsettling Uvalde Surveillance Footage Sparks Uproar
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY…
1850: 1st public demonstration of ice made by refrigeration by Florida physician John Gorrie.
Newly-published surveillance footage of the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has sparked outrage from horrified Americans after seeing police wait more than an hour to confront the gunman — despite entering the school just minutes after the violence began.
Footage shows the officers “walking back and forth in the hallway, some leaving the camera frame and then reappearing, others training their weapons toward the classroom, talking, making cellphone calls, sending texts and looking at floor plans, but not entering or attempting to enter the classrooms,” the Austin American-Statesman reported.
The 77-minute video, published by the Austin American-Statesman, shows the gunman enter the school at 11:33 a.m. on May 24. He fires his weapon inside two classrooms for two and a half minutes. Authorities say more than 100 rounds were fired. Officers enter the school just three minutes later, but they waited over an hour to confront the gunman.
Several officers rush toward the classrooms, but retreat to a nearby hallway once more shots were fired by the gunman. At 12:09, 36 minutes later, more officers enter the school — some heavily armed, wearing body armor, and carrying ballistic shields — but they stay in the hallway.
At 12:21, the gunman fires four more rounds. The officers eventually move toward the classrooms, but then they still just stand in the hallway. At 12:30, one officer is seen casually using hand sanitizer.
Finally, at 12:50 p.m. — 77 minutes after the gunman began his attack — officers breach the classroom and neutralize the gunman.
The footage immediately sparked outrage over the police officer’s handling of the shooting.
“Would love to hear from this Uvalde cop why he was worried about putting on hand sanitizer while a shooter was massacring kids twenty feet down the hall,” said Cabot Phillips, a senior editor of the conservative outlet The Daily Wire.
“That cop in Uvalde having his lock screen be the Punisher logo and him being scared to take on an active shooter is truly the perfect encapsulation of how cops see themselves vs who they really are,” one critic wrote on Twitter.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLoughlin condemned the media for releasing the video, which was supposed to be shown to the victims’ families before being released to the public.
“That was the most chicken way to put this video out today,” McLoughlin said.
“There was no reason for those families to have to see that. They were going to see the video but they didn’t need to see the gunman coming in and hear the gunshots,” he added. “They don’t need to relive that. They’ve been through enough.”