"Massacre in Uvalde"
INVESTIGATIVE CATEGORY
San Antonio Express-News
04/24/2022
On the morning of May 24, 2022, an 18-year-old armed with an assault rifle slaughtered 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Reporters from the San Antonio Express-News and its sister paper, the Houston Chronicle, teamed up to cover the breaking news.
The papers also mobilized investigative reporters to get beneath the shifting official narrative and find out what really happened, and their work in the days and weeks after the massacre is the subject of this entry.
In the eight stories submitted here, the reporters brought to light significant new information about the gunman, the shooting, the botched law enforcement response and the checkered career of Uvalde’s school police chief, who was the incident commander at Robb Elementary.
Among the highlights:
On May 24, hours after the shooting, St. John Barned-Smith of the Chronicle broke the news that the gunman, Salvador Ramos, had purchased two assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition the week before -- just days after he turned 18 and could legally do so.
On May 25, Express-News reporters Brian Chasnoff and Guillermo Contreras described how, days before his killing spree, Ramos telegraphed his intentions on social media, posting a photo of two assault rifles on Instagram and messaging a girl to say: “I’m about to.”
A week after the tragedy, Contreras debunked a key element of the official narrative: that a teacher had carelessly propped open a rear door through which the gunman entered the school. Contreras reported – and state officials confirmed -- that this was untrue: The teacher closed the door securely, and the gunman was able to enter because the lock was faulty. Contreras’ exclusive was followed by National Public Radio, the Associated Press, CNN and other news organizations.
On June 4, before bodycam or security footage had been made public, Contreras published a detailed reconstruction of the shooting based in part on law enforcement interviews with a 10-year-old survivor. Among other exclusive details, the story revealed that Uvalde school police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo did not bring his police radio with him into Robb Elementary, severely limiting his communications and situational awareness.
On June 18, Chasnoff disclosed that investigators had determined that during the entire 77-minute standoff, police officers never tried to open the door to the classrooms where the gunman was holed up with his victims. The scoop was picked up by Texas and national news organizations and was confirmed days later in legislative testimony by the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Links to Content Online”
MAIN LINK to content online
LINK 2 to content online
LINK 3 to content online
LINK 4 to content online
LINK 5 to content online
LINK 6 to content online
LINK 7 to content online
LINK 8 to content online
LINK 9 to content online
Please use these credentials to access ExpressNews.com:
Username: expressnewscontest@gmail.com
Password: expressnewscontest1
Submitted by Marc Duvoisin.