Uvalde shooting: Texas Gov. Abbott calls House investigation ‘beyond disturbing,’ demands ‘critical changes’

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called for “critical changes” Monday in response to the state House’s investigation into the Uvalde school shooting at Robb Elementary on May 24.

“The findings in their investigative report are beyond disturbing and raise serious concerns about the response that day,” Abbott said in a statement. “There are critical changes needed as a result of the Texas House’s findings.”

Abbott said he would work with state lawmakers to improve public safety, school safety and mental health assessments.

The governor is the latest high-ranking Texas official to condemn the active shooter response.

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Dustin Burrows, the Texas state representative who led the House committee investigating the incident, slammed “multiple systemic failures” and a “lack of effective overall command.”

Shocking surveillance video of the response shows armed and armored police in the hallway outside the classrooms where a gunman killed 19 children and 2 adults.

Children inside the elementary school classroom called 911 multiple times pleading for help.

But it wasn’t until 77 minutes after the 18-year-old killer entered the school that a tactical team breached the classroom door and shot him dead, according to authorities. 

The school district’s police chief, Pete Arredondo, received a storm of criticism for his perceived lack of leadership at the scene.

The report found that, “Other than the attack, the Committee did not find any ‘villains’ in the course of its investigation. There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives. Instead, we found systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making,”

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Experts on active shooter responses with the FBI and DEA, as well as Texas’ Public Safety Director Steve McCrew, have said that response took far too long.

McCraw told the state Senate’s Special Committee to Protect All Texans last week that the police response to the active shooting was an “abject failure and antithetical to everything we’ve learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre.”

Katherine Schweit, a former FBI special agent who launched the bureau’s active shooter program after the Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut, said law enforcement officers are trained to pursue and neutralize active shooters immediately.

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“We learned from Columbine that we had to do a more effective job of getting in to get to where the shooter was, not just to stop the shooting, but also to look for opportunities to save people who might be injured and bleeding out,” she said.

Abbott’s office says he has already taken executive actions calling for comprehensive reviews and strategies and has invested more than $105 million to enhance school safety and mental health services in the wake of the attack. Uvalde County will also get $5 million for a family resiliency center.