The families of the Uvalde school massacre have expressed their outrage after surveillance footage from the shooting was leaked to the public even before they could see it.
The Austin American-Statesman and KVUE- TV published edited portions of leaked footage from the fatal shooting of 24 May at Robb Elementary School, which claimed the lives of 19 students and two teachers.
The four-minute-long video opens with surveillance footage from outside the school, as the gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, crashes a truck before firing three shots at two men on the street. Once the gunman enters the building at 11.33am, the footage from inside the school reveals him pacing the hallway with a high-powered rifle.
A student on the other end of the hallway peers around a corner as the gunman walks down the hall. Seconds later, he unleashes a burst of gunfire into a classroom.
He fires his AR-15 rifle for two and a half minutes, according to the video. Law enforcement reported that more than 100 rounds were fired.
Several police officers are then seen entering the school hallway roughly three minutes later, at 11.36am, according to the video.
Seventy-seven minutes later, at roughly 12.50pm, officers breach the classroom and kill the gunman. More than a dozen officers, most of them heavily armed, can be seen in the hallway at that point.
Slamming the leak, the father of one of the victims said they were “pissed” that the footage “got shown all over the world”.
“We were supposed to get some footage shown to us on Sunday of the filming inside the hallway and then we got a call, another parent got a call saying that someone got a hold of it. It got released and got leaked,” said Javier Cazares, who lost his nine-year-old daughter Jackie in the shooting.
“They didn’t have our permission to do so,” he said during a press conference in Washington DC, reported CNN. “We didn’t want any audio and these sons of b****** did it. It got leaked. It got shown all over the world and we are pissed.”
“These families didn’t deserve it. I don’t deserve it. That’s a slap to our babies’ faces and we’re tired of this. We can’t trust anybody no more. It’s aggravating,” he added.
“Whoever leaked that video... I pray that you never have to deal with what all the parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles are dealing with. Shame on you,” another family member of the victim said, according to CBS News.
The leak came hours after Republican representative Dustin Burrows, chairing the Texas House committee investigating the Uvalde school shooting, announced plans to release footage of law enforcement response after leading a private briefing for victims’ families in Uvalde on Sunday, reported the Texas Tribune.
“The Committee will convene at 2pm on Sunday in Uvalde. We will meet with members of the community first, and provide them an opportunity to see the hallway video and discuss our preliminary report,” he had tweeted. “Very soon thereafter, we will release both to the public.”
Mayor Don McLaughlin also slammed the leak. “The way that video was released today was the most chicken thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.
“I am angry that the victim’s families and the Uvalde community’s request to watch the video first before it was made public did not happen,” he later said in a statement. “I share Representative Burrows’ disappointment, and believe that watching the entire video of law enforcement’s response or lack of response is also very important to understanding what happened on May 24 (sic).”
Without naming the news organisation, he also fired at the media for publishing the leak.
“Regardless, it is unbelievable that this video was posted as part of a news story with images and audio of the violence of this incident without consideration for the families involved,” he said. “I continue to stand behind my statements that full transparency and consideration for the families remains the priority as it relates to this incident."
Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Steven McCraw, said he was “deeply disappointed this video was released before all of the families who were impacted that day and the community of Uvalde had the opportunity to view it as part of Chairman Dustin Burrows’ plan.”
“Those most affected should have been among the first to see it. As I stated during my testimony before the Senate Special Committee to Protect All Texans, this video provides horrifying evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary on May 24 was an abject failure,” he said.
“In law enforcement, when one officer fails, we all fail.”
