A措辞严厉的77页报告德克萨斯州立法机构的一个联合委员会包含了德克萨斯州乌瓦尔迪罗布小学大规模枪击事件的新细节,并抨击了警方对此事件的反应以及学区对这种袭击的准备不足。
这份报告于周日公布,此前该委员会与5月24日枪击案中遇难的19名学生和两名教师的许多亲人一起审查了这份报告,报告详细说明了学校防范入侵者的措施中的一些重大失误,以及多个执法机构动员起来对抗全副武装的枪手的缓慢方式。
虽然该委员会表示,除了枪手之外,没有发现其他“坏人”应对这起致命袭击负责,但它发现“系统性失误和惊人的糟糕决策”阻碍了对这起暴行的快速反应。
以下是该委员会对美国历史上最致命的校园枪击案之一的调查的五个关键要点。
学校毫无准备
在报告的开头几页,委员会列举了学区和罗布小学工作人员在阻止活跃的枪手进入校园和学校建筑方面缺乏准备。
“事后看来,我们可以说罗柏小学没有为校园武装入侵者的风险做好充分准备,”该委员会写道。
该小组表示,学校5英尺高的外部围栏“不足以有效阻止入侵者”,监控视频显示枪手很容易爬上校园
更重要的是,该委员会发现,虽然学校采取了安全政策,以确保在学校上课时锁好教室的外门和内门,但这些协议大多被忽视。
该委员会表示,“学校工作人员经常推开门,故意绕过门锁,这种不合规的文化令人遗憾。”。
根据委员会的说法,这种行为得到了学校管理者的“默许”。
“事实上,学校实际上建议绕过锁作为一种解决方案,以方便代课老师和其他没有自己钥匙的人,”该委员会写道。
学校工作人员知道门没有锁
调查人员说,枪手通过校园西侧的一扇门进入学校,在一名教师用一块石头撑开门,从她的车里拿出食物后,门没有锁好。
“没有人锁上罗柏小学西楼三扇外门中的任何一扇,这违反了学校的政策。因此,攻击者可以畅通无阻地进入,”该委员会报告说。
该委员会还指责学区未能以“适当的紧迫性”对待已知有故障锁的门的维护
根据委员会的报告,“特别是,工作人员和学生普遍知道受害教室之一,111室的门通常是不安全的,可以进入。”“111号房间可以上锁,但需要额外的努力来确保门闩锁好,”报告说。
现场没有事故指挥官
该委员会在对枪击事件的反应中发现了许多“乌瓦尔德联合独立学区和各种执法机构和官员的缺点和失误”。其中最主要的是,在大屠杀发生时,现场没有指定的事故指挥官。
“在罗柏小学,执法人员未能坚持积极的射击训练,他们未能将拯救无辜受害者的生命置于自身安全之上,”该委员会报告说。
UCISD警察皮特·阿雷东多局长和乌瓦尔迪警察局特警队的指挥官是第一批到达学校的执法人员。然而,该委员会表示,他们两人都没有担任事件指挥官的角色,协调来自地方、州和联邦机构的376名执法人员对枪击事件做出快速反应。
“乌瓦尔迪·CISD的书面主动射击计划指示其警察局长承担指挥和控制对主动射击者的反应,”根据该报告。
该委员会表示,随着大屠杀的展开,Arredondo据称未能担任事件指挥官的角色,也未能将责任转移给现场的另一名官员,尽管这是他在帮助编写的主动射手计划中分配给自己的“基本职责”。
“然而,没有任何人有效地执行,”该委员会写道。“领导力的缺失可能是造成生命损失的原因之一,因为受伤的受害者等待帮助的时间超过了一个小时,而袭击者继续零星地开枪。”
据报道,从嫌疑人进入学校到警察破门而入并杀死他用了73分钟。
缺乏沟通
该委员会发现,通过简单地建立一个指挥所,当时的混乱可能已经转化为秩序,由事故指挥官分配任务,并帮助信息流动,这些信息本可以用于“通知关键决策”,报告称。
“值得注意的是,没有人确保在大楼内做出关键决定的响应者收到了学生和教师在最初的枪声中幸存下来,被困在111和112房间,并大声呼救的信息,”该委员会写道。“大楼内外的一些应急人员通过无线电通讯了解到这一信息。但没有一个指挥官分析过这些信息,认为袭击者阻止了伤势严重的受害者获得医疗护理。”
然而,Arredondo错误地认为枪手被设置了路障,而响应的警察有足够的时间来处理这种情况。
委员会写道:“他们不应该继续表现得好像是在处理一个设置了路障的主题场景,在这个场景中,响应者有时间站在他们一边,他们应该重新评估这个场景,因为它涉及到一个活跃的射手。”“纠正这一错误应该激发更大的紧迫感,以任何可能的方式立即闯入教室,制服攻击者,并向幸存的受害者提供紧急援助。”
该报告还称,数百名快速抵达现场的第一反应人员中,许多人比学区警察训练有素,装备更好,“但在这场危机中,没有一名反应人员主动建立了事件指挥所。”
“尽管有明显的混乱气氛,但其他应对机构的高级官员没有接近乌瓦尔迪·CISD警察局长或任何被认为是指挥官的人,以指出指挥所的缺乏和需要,或提供具体的援助,”报告称。
“执法部门及其培训、准备和应对的整体对那悲惨的一天错过的许多机会负有系统的责任,”报告说。
袭击者的动机
自大屠杀发生以来,关于可能动机的信息第一次被纳入报告。
“罗伯小学大屠杀背后的一个动机是对恶名和名声的渴望,”该委员会在其报告中表示,拒绝使用他的名字。
委员会深入调查了嫌疑人的背景,发现他一直到八年级都是个好学生。据报道,他很快就走上了黑暗的道路,并成为一名连续逃学者,最终导致他在九年级时被学校开除。
嫌犯在罗伯小学上学,一直到四年级。
“枪击发生在他以前四年级的教室里,几周前他和一个熟人讨论了四年级的糟糕记忆,”该委员会报告说。
嫌疑人的四年级老师在委员会面前作证,承认她知道他在班上需要额外的帮助,因为“他声称自己是欺凌的受害者。”
嫌疑人的前女友告诉委员会,他们在2021年年中分手,她形容他“孤独、抑郁,经常被朋友们取笑,他们称他为‘校园枪手’。”“她说他还声称自己小时候受到过性侵犯。
“她说他反复告诉她,他活不过18岁,要么是因为他会自杀,要么只是因为他‘活不长’”,报告陈述道。
报告称,在社交媒体平台上,他表达了对血腥和暴力的兴趣,在网上分享斩首和可怕事故的视频,并向其他在线用户发送明确的信息。
“最后,袭击者对校园枪击事件产生了兴趣,对此他并不隐瞒,”报告称。
该委员会还听取了证词,根据报道,嫌疑人告诉熟人,他正在为“一些大事情”囤积资金,他们都将在新闻上看到他。
委员会发现,他的声明从未向当局报告过。
该委员会写道,嫌疑人在2022年初开始制定袭击学校的计划,此前他与母亲就他在Instagram上的直播发生了“井喷争吵”。
调查人员认为,嫌疑人在2020年2月开始储备枪支配件,包括60发和30发弹匣、全息武器瞄准器和卡扣式触发系统。报道称,他在5月满18岁时合法购买了弹药和枪支,包括两支AR-15步枪。
委员会在报告中列入了3月23日在Robb小学发生的一起事件,当时有人看到一名身穿黑衣、背着背包的可疑人员在学校拉票。据该委员会称,此人的身份从未被确认。
5 major details from committee's Uvalde mass shooting report
Ascathing 77-page reportby a joint committee of the Texas Legislature contained new details of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and slammed the police response to the incident and the school district's lack of preparation for such an attack.
The report, which was made public Sunday after the committee reviewed it with many of the loved ones of the 19 students and two teachers killed in the May 24 shooting, detailed a number of major lapses in measures to fortify the school from intruders and the slow manner in which multiple law enforcement agencies mobilized to confront the heavily armed gunman.
While the committee said it found no "villains" other than the gunman to blame for the deadly attack, it found "systemic failures and egregious poor decision making" that prevented a speedy response to the rampage.
Here are five key takeaways from the committee's investigation of one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.
School was unprepared
In the report's opening pages, the committee cited the lack of preparation by the school district and the Robb Elementary staff to prevent an active shooter from getting onto the campus and into the school building.
"With hindsight, we can say Robb Elementary did not adequately prepare for the risk of an armed intruder on campus," the committee wrote.
The panel said the school's 5-foot-tall exterior fence, which surveillance video showed the gunman easily climbing to get onto the campus, was "in adequate to meaningfully impede an intruder."
More importantly, the committee found that while the school had adopted security policies to ensure exterior doors and internal classroom door were locked while school was in session, those protocols were mostly ignored.
"There was a regrettable culture of noncompliance by school personnel who frequently propped doors open and deliberately circumvented locks," the committee said.
Such behavior, according to the committee, was "tacitly condoned" by the school administrators.
"In fact, the school actually suggested circumventing the locks as a solution for the convenience of substitute teachers and others who lacked their own key," the committee wrote.
School staff knew doors were unlocked
The gunman entered the school through a door on the west side of the campus that didn't latch properly after a teacher had propped it open with a rock to bring in food from her car, investigators said.
"In violation of school policy, no one had locked any of the three exterior doors to the west building of Robb Elementary. As a result, the attacker had unimpeded access to enter," the committee reported.
The committee also faulted the school district for failing to treat the maintenance of doors with known faulty locks with "appropriate urgency."
"In particular, staff and students widely knew the door to one of the victimized classrooms, Room 111, was ordinarily unsecured and accessible," according to the committee's report. "Room 111 could be locked, but an extra effort was required to make sure the latch engaged," the report said.
No incident commander at the scene
The committee found numerous "shortcomings and failures of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and of various agencies and officers of law enforcement" in the response to the shooting. Chief of among them was that there was no designated incident commander at the scene as the massacre was unfolding.
"At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving lives of innocent victims over their own safety," the committee reported.
UCISD PoliceChief Pete Arredondoand the commander of the Uvalde Police Department's SWAT team were among the first wave of law enforcement officers to arrive at the school. However, neither of them assumed the role of incident commander to coordinate the 376 law enforcement officers from local, state and federal agencies who quickly responded to the shooting, the committee said.
"The Uvalde CISD's written active shooter plan directed its police chief to assume command and control the response to an active shooter," according to the report.
But as the massacre unfolded, Arredondo allegedly failed to take on the role of incident commander or transfer the responsibility to another officer on scene, despite it being an "essential duty" he had assigned himself in the active shooter plan he helped write, the committee said.
"Yet it was not effectively performed by anyone," the committee wrote. "The void of leadership could have contributed to the loss of life as injured victims waited for over an hour for help, and the attacker continued to sporadically fire his weapon."
It took 73 minutes between the time the suspect entered the school to when officers breached the door of the classroom and killed him, according to the report.
Lack of communication
The committee found that by simply setting up a command post, which was not done, the chaos of the moment could have been transformed into order by the incident commander assigning tasks and aiding in the flow of information that could have been used to "inform critical decisions," according to the report.
"Notably, nobody ensured that responders making key decisions inside the building received information that students and teachers had survived the initial burst of gunfire, were trapped in Rooms 111 and 112, and had called out for help," the committee wrote. "Some responders outside and inside the building knew that information through radio communications. But nobody in command analyzed this information to recognize that the attacker was preventing critically injured victims from obtaining medical care."
Arredondo, however, erroneously believed the shooter was barricaded and that responding officers had time on their side to deal with the situation.
"Instead of continuing to act as if they were addressing a barricaded subject scenario in which responders had time on their side, they should have reassessed the scenario as one involving an active shooter," the committee wrote. "Correcting this error should have sparked greater urgency to immediately breach the classroom by any possible means, to subdue the attacker, and to deliver immediate aid to surviving victims."
The report also said of the hundreds of first responders who quickly arrived on the scene, many were better trained and better equipped than the school district police, "yet in this crisis, no responder seized the initiative to establish an incident command post."
"Despite an obvious atmosphere of chaos, the ranking officers of other responding agencies, did not approach the Uvalde CISD chief of police or anyone else perceived to be in command to point out the lack of and need for a command post, or offer that specific assistance," the report states.
"The entirety of law enforcement and its training, preparation, and response shares systemic responsibility for many missed opportunities on that tragic day," the report said.
The attacker's motive
For the first time since the massacre occurred, information on a possible motive was included in the report.
"One motive that drove the man behind the massacre at Robb Elementary School was a desire for notoriety and fame," the committee stated in its report, refusing to use his name.
The committee delved into the suspect's background, finding he had been a good student up to the eighth grade. He then quickly took a dark path and became a serial truant that eventually got him kicked out of school in the ninth grade, according to the report.
The suspect attended school at Robb Elementary up to the fourth grade.
"The shooting took place in his former fourth grade classroom, and he discussed bad memories of fourth grade with an acquaintance just weeks beforehand," the committee reported.
The suspect's fourth grade teacher testified before the committee, acknowledging she knew he needed extra help in her class because "he claimed to be a victim of bullying."
The suspect's ex-girlfriend told the committee they broke up in mid-2021 and she described him as "lonely and depressed, constantly teased by friends who called him a 'school shooter.'" She said he also claimed that he was sexually assaulted as a child.
"She said that he told her repeatedly that he wouldn't live past eighteen, either because he would commit suicide or simply because he 'wouldn't live long,'" the report states.
On social media platforms, he expressed an interest in gore and violence, sharing videos online of beheadings and horrific accidents, and sending explicit messages to other online users, the report said.
"Finally, the attacker developed a fascination with school shootings, of which he made no secret," according to the report.
The committee also heard testimony that the suspect told acquaintances he was hoarding money for "something big" and that they would all see him on the news one day, according to the report.
None of his statements were ever reported to authorities, the committee found.
The committee wrote that the suspect began to formulate his plan to attack the school in early 2022 after he got into a "blowout argument" with his mother that he livestreamed on Instagram.
Investigators believe the suspect began stockpiling firearm accessories, including 60- and 30-round magazines, holographic weapon sights and snap-on trigger systems in February 2020. He legally purchased ammunition and guns, including two AR-15 rifles, when he turned 18 in May, according to the report.
The committee included in the report an incident that occurred at Robb Elementary School on March 23, in which a suspicious person dressed in black and with a backpack was seen canvassing the school. The person was never identified, according to the committee.