A 77-page report released on Sunday found that school administrators did not ‘adequately prepare’ for the risk of a mass shooter at Robb Elementary school and said that there was a ‘regrettable culture of noncompliance’ with school personnel when it came to the safety and security of their students.
This noncompliance, the report said, “turned out to be fatal.”
The report was released by the Texas House of Representatives Investigative Committee after an investigation was launched into the mass shooting at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas which left 19 children and two teachers dead.
The report detailed that even though the school had security policies in place requiring exterior doors and internal classroom doors to be locked, school personnel frequently “propped doors open and deliberately circumvented locks.”
Instead of addressing the violation of safety rules, the administrators and school district police ‘tacitly condoned’ them,
“While the school had adopted security policies to lock exterior doors and internal classroom doors, there was a regrettable culture of noncompliance by school personnel who frequently propped doors open and deliberately circumvented locks,” the report stated. “At a minimum, school administrators and school district police tacitly condoned this behavior as they were aware of these unsafe practices and did not treat them as serious infractions requiring immediate correction.”
In fact, administrators actually suggested doors remained unlocked to make it more convenient for substitute teachers and others who did not have their own keys to enter into the building,
“The west door to the west building was supposed to be continuously locked. When the attacker approached on May 24, 2022, it was unlocked, and he was able to enter the building there.”
Not only that, but school administrators failed to lock any of the three exterior doors to the West building. If they had, the report stated, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos could have been stopped before he ever had the chance to murder 21 people,
“Locking the exterior and interior doors ultimately may not have been enough to stop the attacker from entering the building and classrooms. But had school personnel locked the doors as the school’s policy required,
that could have slowed his progress for a few precious minutes—long enough to receive alerts,
hide children, and lock doors; and long enough to give police more opportunity to engage and
stop the attacker before he could massacre 19 students and two teachers.”
In addition, the report stated that the school district did not act to repair faulty locks – like the one located on the door of the one of the classrooms that the gunman entered and opened fire,
“In particular, staff and students widely knew the door to one of the victimized classrooms,
Room 111, was ordinarily unsecured and accessible. Room 111 could be locked, but an extra
effort was required to make sure the latch engaged. Many knew Room 111’s door had a faulty
lock, and school district police had specifically warned the teacher about it. The problem with
locking the door had been reported to school administration, yet no one placed a written work
order for a repair.”
The report also revealed “multiple systemic failures” including a failure to adequately prepare for the risk of a potential shooter.
“With hindsight, we can say that Robb Elementary did not adequately prepare for the risk of an armed intruder on campus. The school’s five-foot tall exterior fence was inadequate to meaningfully impede an intruder,” the report stated.
The report then directly pointed to the safety violations by school administrators and the failure to repair faulty locks as reasons why Ramos was able to murder so many children,
“Because of these failures of facilities maintenance and advance preparation, the attacker fired
most of his shots and likely murdered most of his innocent victims before any responder set
foot in the building. Of the approximately 142 rounds the attacker fired inside the building, it
is almost certain that he rapidly fired over 100 of those rounds before any officer entered.”
The report also took aim at the 376 law enforcement officers who arrived at the school and waited for more than an hour to engage the gunman.
To read full report click HERE
