By Arelis R. Hernández, Steven Rich, Joyce Sohyun Lee and Sarah Cahlan
Washington Post
In a 911 call released Saturday by the city of Uvalde, Texas, a 10-year-old student in a classroom at Robb Elementary School can be heard counting survivors and calming crying, screaming classmates during the 2022 school massacre. The recording is one of dozens of recordings the city released after it was sued by a coalition of news organizations, including The Washington Post.
The recordings also include bodycam footage from five police officers, dashcam videos, recorded 911 calls, radio and 911 calls, and text messages between various officers. Lawsuits against Uvalde County, the school district, and the Texas Department of Public Safety for additional recordings are pending.
“A lot of people are dead,” said Khloie Torres as she tried to count the survivors in her fourth-grade class, but gave up when she reached eight. Other students could be heard screaming at police officers and begging for help, and the injured could be heard moaning. Torres tried to calm them down.
“Please help, they’re dying,” she told the emergency services. Torres survived the shooting.
The Post had previously obtained most of the Texas Rangers investigation records released Saturday, including excerpts from Torres’ phone conversation, but the new information includes her entire 17-minute conversation with a dispatcher.
In the extended emergency call, the sound of a police radio and the voices of the police officers standing outside the classroom can be faintly heard in the background through Torres’ phone.
A Post investigation with ProPublica and the Texas Tribune found that emergency medical care was thwarted by police’s botched efforts to stop the gunman. The police’s unfortunate shift from an active shooter stance to a barricaded perpetrator slowed the response and thwarted some of the life-saving efforts, a 20-minute Post documentary also found last year.
The newly released documents come more than two years after the massacre that left 19 children and two teachers dead, and calls from victims’ families for more transparency about law enforcement’s actions have reached a fever pitch. Two school district police officers, including former police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, have been criminally charged in connection with law enforcement’s botched response to the massacre.
Arredondo defended himself in a CNN interview last week, his first since being charged with 10 counts of child endangerment. He said he was being made a scapegoat and that Texas State Troopers should have taken over the operation. It took more than 70 minutes before an officer was able to confront the shooter.
“These are my children too, people don’t understand that,” Arredondo said, describing how he walked those hallways daily and got to know the gunned down students. He blamed “lies and deception” for promoting false narratives that caused him to lose the trust of his community.
Adrian Gonzales, the other former school district police officer charged, pleaded not guilty last month to 29 counts of child endangerment. Few Texas prosecutors have ever charged a police officer with such a crime. But a Uvalde County grand jury indicted the two in late June.
