Families of Robb Elementary School students were given conflicting information on whether their children were alive or dead following a mass shooting, with some only finding out their kids had died when autopsy reports were ordered, a damning new report revealed.
At one point, families were told "an additional bus of survivors was coming... it did not," Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta told reporters on Thursday.
Gupta was outlining the findings in a bombshell report released by the Department of Justice on Thursday, which found that law enforcement failed in multiple ways to respond appropriately to the shooting which left 19 students and two teachers dead.
"Many family members waited at the school for hours without status updates, not knowing where their children were, if they were safe or hurt or even alive," she added, saying relatives were sent all over looking for their kids.
"Some of these details are gut-wrenching. Families hearing about the need for autopsy results as the first indications that their loved ones may not have survived," Gupta continued.
"At one point, hours after the shooting, an official incorrectly told families waiting at the Civic Center that an additional bus load of survivors was coming. It did not."
Communication failures left families confused
The report criticized communication on the day of the shooting and in the days which followed. It highlighted a Facebook post from the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD) Police Department, which stated that students and staff were "safe in the buildings" 30 minutes after the shooter began firing.
"This reassurance was later determined to be inaccurate," the report said. "The language was copied and pasted from a template that the UCISD Communications and Marketing Office created for posting about law enforcement pursuits of undocumented immigrants that had increased significantly in previous months.
"This false reassurance from UCISD was never corrected."
The report said that the communications office had become "immune" to the urgency of emergency alerts and that it was "impossible to measure" the damage done by inaccurate messaging.
Parents were then urged to not head to the school site and instead were told about a reunification site at Uvalde's Civic Center. Various messages over 30 minutes gave conflicting details on what parents should do.
"It is hard to look at the truth that the law enforcement response on May 24, 2022 was an unimaginable failure and the lack of action by adults failed to protect children and their teachers," Gupta said.
The Associate Attorney General said multiple media communications offered conflicting information in the hours and days after the shooting, including from Governor Greg Abbott, who gave inaccurate details on the victims during the first press briefing.
The report offered multiple recommendations for law enforcement agencies going forward on how best to handle mass shooting incidents.
“Reports like this are critical to law enforcement and, by extension, to the community," Director Hugh T. Clements, Jr. of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) said in a press release.
"As agencies constantly strive to do better and be more fully prepared, detailed observations and recommendations like those within this report are invaluable to agencies planning for the future.”