Lead Investigator In Uvalde Police Probe Had No Active Shooter Training: Report

“Our dead children are more qualified to investigate,” Brett Cross, a parent of a child killed in the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting, told HuffPost.

The lead investigator hired to scrutinize the police response to the 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, had no active shooter training, a local news station reported.

Texas Commission on Law Enforcement records obtained by KSAT show that investigator Jesse Prado — who ultimately cleared all Uvalde police officers of wrongdoing in a shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead — had no active shooter training over the course of his 20 years with the Austin (Texas) Police Department.

The city of Uvalde hired Prado in July 2022 to lead an independent investigation into local police officers’ response to the incident. Prado presented his findings in March and said that no local police officers violated department policy. The council has not decided whether to accept the report’s findings.

Several months after the shooting, Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, testified that there were enough police officers on scene that day to stop the gunman three minutes after he entered the building. Instead, officers waited 77 minutes to confront the shooter. McCraw called the response an “abject failure.”

Uvalde Mayor Pro Tem Everardo Zamora told KSAT that when hiring Prado, the City Council took the advice of the city’s attorneys, with the firm Tarski Law. Neither Zamora nor the city of Uvalde returned HuffPost’s requests for comment. Prado told HuffPost he couldn’t comment.