Documents released last week by Uvalde County reveal safety concerns and new details regarding the school shooter responsible for killing 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022.
According to ProPublica, Uvalde County and the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District released almost 12 gigabytes of files last week regarding the tragic school shooting after ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, and other news outlets filed a lawsuit against state and local governments in the aftermath of the school shooting.
ProPublica reported that the new records confirm that law enforcement officials failed to quickly confront Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old school shooter. The outlet noted that officials waited 77 minutes to confront Ramos and responded to the shooting as if Ramos was a barricaded subject instead of an active threat to the school.
The documents obtained by ProPublica reveal new information about Ramos prior to the massacre he carried out at Robb Elementary School. The documents show that district officials were concerned about the 18-year-old using sexual language, hitting a fellow student, and drawing inappropriate pictures. An email from Hal Harrell, the former superintendent of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, showed that the 18-year-old rarely attended school and was repeatedly failing his classes.
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ProPublica reported that while academic plans and tutoring were recommended by the school, the documents did not reveal what actions were taken by Ramos’ guardians prior to Ramos dropping out of school. Additionally, ProPublica noted that the school’s intervention plans indicated that the student’s “behavior” was listed as the motivation behind the intervention.
According to ProPublica, a Uvalde sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to Ramos’ home twice in the span of two days due to reports of verbal and physical disturbance between the 18-year-old and his family. The incidents took places approximately three months prior to the school shooting. Documents show that Ramos’ mother, Adriana Reyes, told a Uvalde sheriff deputy that she was “scared of Salvador and wanted help.”
The documents also reveal that school administrators were aware that there were issues with the locks on school doors. Witnesses reported that school employees left doors unlocked and that teachers used various objects to keep interior and exterior doors open. ProPublica reported that Ramos entered the school through an exterior door that was unlocked.
Commenting on the release of the documents years after the tragic shooting, Jesse Rizo, a school board member whose niece was killed in the shooting, said, “It’s important so that the families can begin to heal, so that the families can begin to trust, so they begin to have some sort of closure.” Rizo added, “It will never be complete closure, but some sort of closure, and rebuilding that trust in law enforcement.”
