Report Finds Uvalde Police Waited 77 Minutes Debating Many Reasons Gunshots Could Be Going Off In Classroom
UVALDE, TX—Nearly two years after the tragic mass shooting left 19 children and two teachers dead, a Justice Department report released Thursday found Uvalde police waited nearly 77 minutes to enter Robb Elementary School as they debated the many reasons gunshots could be going off in a classroom. “Our findings suggest Uvalde police officers spent one hour and 17 minutes in the parking lot brainstorming all the possibilities for why semi-automatic gunfire was issuing from within the school,” the report read in part, describing how the police huddled together, discussed why there was probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for gunfire emanating from an elementary school, and spent well over an hour listing off dozens of sources that could produce a similar sound, including a “hoodlum throwing firecrackers,” heavy books dropping on the floor, someone playing a video game “like Call Of Duty” on their laptop, or even a music teacher playing early ’90s gangsta rap. “At one point, the Uvalde school police chief [Pete Arredondo] appears to have prevented a few concerned officers from approaching the school, insisting they ‘hadn’t gotten to the bottom of this stuff yet’ and urging them to look up ‘mysterious gunshot-like noises’ on Google. That’s when they came up with the idea that the shots might have simply been someone beatboxing, which they got really excited about for 20 minutes.” The report also confirmed that police officers spent an additional half hour discussing how the screaming was probably nothing to be worried about because children that age tend to scream about everything.
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