After the report came out, Uvalde’s mayor, Don McLaughlin, said the acting chief at the time of the shooting, Lt. Mariano Pargas, had been placed on administrative leave and that the city had launched its own internal investigation. The city released body camera footage documenting Uvalde officers’ actions at the scene.
The facts laid out in the report also make clear that neither existing gun laws nor the expanded background checks enacted by Congress in response to the shooting would have prevented the shooter, Salvador Ramos, from obtaining the weapon he used.
Despite being called a “school shooter” by some peers, the shooter had no documented history that would prevent him from purchasing a gun. The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature has so far not considered legislation restricting firearms in response to the Uvalde shooting, focusing much of its attention during public hearings on the police response and school security.
While the account presented by the commission added disturbing new details, it did not materially change public understanding of what happened at Robb Elementary School as it was collected by The New York Times and other news organizations in the weeks that followed.
Instead, it deepened the sense of an out-of-control law enforcement response.
Officers gathered on the north and south sides of the classrooms where the shooter was hiding, but did not communicate with each other, the report found. Despite searches for a classroom master key by school police chief Pete Arredondo and others, no one called the principal who had one. The utility of a specialized door opener was tested but then rejected as too dangerous for employees.
The chief of the Uvalde Police Department called from vacation to tell the acting chief, Lt. Pargas, to set up a command post. Mr. Pargas did so at a funeral home office across the street, but then left shortly thereafter. “This did not lead to the creation of an effective command post,” the report said.
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