‘Critical failures’ in Texas school massacre response: US justice dept

WASHINGTON: A damning Justice Department report on Thursday cited “critical failures” by Texas police who waited until 21 people had been killed by a mass shooter at a school before finally intervening.

19 young children and two teachers were killed when a teenage gunman went on a rampage at Robb Elementary School in May 2022 in America´s worst school shooting in a decade. Police eventually shot and killed the gunman.

Investigators “identified several critical failures”, the report said, and “the most significant failure was that the responding officers should have immediately recognised the incident as an active shooter situation.”

“In summary, the response to the May 24, 2022, mass casualty incident at Robb Elementary School was a failure,” said the critical incident review which is more than 550 pages long. “The painful lessons detailed in this report are not meant to exacerbate an already tragic situation.”

Police in Uvalde have been under intense scrutiny since it emerged that more than a dozen officers waited for over an hour outside classrooms where the shooting was taking place and did nothing as children lay dead or dying inside.

A total of 376 officers -- border guards, state police, city police, local sheriff departments and elite forces -- responded to the massacre, a Texas state lawmakers´ report said in July 2022.

But the situation was “chaotic” due to the officers´ “lackadaisical approach” to subduing the gunman, the report charged.

“The shooter was not killed until approximately 77 minutes after law enforcement first arrived,” it said.