Text messages reveal police conversations following the Uvalde school shooting

More than two years after the deadly massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the city released files related to the shooting on Saturday.

More than two years after the deadly massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the city on Saturday released bodycam and dashcam videos, audio recordings of 911 calls and radio communication, documents and text messages related to the shooting. Most of the material released was previously reported by CNN. The files - some of which were redacted - were released only after CNN and more than a dozen other major news organizations filed a lawsuit to obtain public records related to the massacre. In one of the 911 calls, first reported by CNN in the months after the shooting, a 10-year-old girl trapped in a classroom tells the police dispatcher to “hurry” as there are “a lot of dead bodies.” The massacre at Robb Elementary School left 19 children and two teachers dead, making it one of the deadliest shootings at a K-12 school in the United States. Law enforcement was heavily criticized for their failed response to the May 2022 incident. While victims lay wounded, it took the 376 law enforcement officers on scene 77 minutes to confront and kill the gunman from the time he entered the school through an unlocked door. More than 90 Texas Department of Public Safety officers responded to the scene and were among the first to arrive. Among the hundreds of pages of text messages released Saturday, a series of messages show a group of officers expressing fear for their safety in the hours and days after the massacre, as community anger and national questions grew over why victims were left with the gunman for well over an hour. In the text messages, multiple officers ask for their photos to be removed from the department’s website after they felt like they were being blamed for the failed response.