KVUE-TV published a video showing police waiting for more than an hour in the school hallway before confronting the shooter on the same day a Texas House committee looking into the Uvalde shooting announced plans to release footage of law enforcement response to the incident.
Local and state politicians were outraged that the video appeared to have leaked before the families of the victims the Uvalde shooting could see it.
Mayor Don McLaughlin said that leaking the footage to the media was unprofessional during a meeting of the Uvalde City Council on Tuesday night. He argued that families should have seen the footage before anyone else.
A Republican state representative from Lubbock Dustin Burrows, who serves as the committee’s chair, announced earlier this week that he would host a private briefing for the victims’ families in Uvalde on Sunday morning so they could view the hallway video from a Robb Elementary School security camera and go over the committee’s draft report.
The committee would then make the footage and report public and respond to inquiries from the media, he said.
A version of the footage that was modified to eliminate children’s screams and hide the face of a student who fled the shooter in the hallway was released by the Statesman and KVUE a few hours after that revelation.
It shows the attacker, an 18-year-old inhabitant of Uvalde shooting inside two classrooms as police arrive on the scene immediately.
After receiving gunfire, the officers flee and don’t come back for more than an hour, when several break into a classroom and fatally shoot the shooter who had already killed 19 children and two teachers.
The video shows numerous law enforcement officers from Uvalde, the state Department of Public Safety, the U.S. Border Patrol, and other organizations. Despite having shields and heavy weapons, many of them waited more than an hour before storming the classroom.
A large portion of the information in the film has already been made public through media reporting and information provided by law officials.