Reconstructing the Uvalde Shooting Response
The FRONTLINE Dispatch
GBH
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 January 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The May 2022 gun massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas left 19 children and two teachers dead. It was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Inside the Uvalde Response, a recent documentary from FRONTLINE, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, probes the chaotic police response to the shooting and sheds new light on law enforcement’s thoughts and actions as the tragedy unfolded.
Among the revelations: Students and teachers at the school had practiced active shooter drills and knew what to do, but scores of law enforcement officers who responded that day did not.
Lomi Kriel, a reporter with the ProPublica-Texas Tribune Investigative Unit, and director Juanita Ceballos join The FRONTLINE Dispatch to discuss how they used hundreds of hours of body cam footage and officer interviews to reconstruct one of the most criticized mass shooting responses in recent history, and examine what went wrong.
“I think one thing that makes this very different is that for prior mass shootings — Parkland, Pulse, others — we just don't necessarily… have this kind of information, both body camera footage, 911 calls, interviews with officers — to actually know how those responses happened.”
Kriel says that while the Uvalde community awaits fuller answers from the district attorney investigating the law enforcement response, FRONTLINE, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune’s reporting provides at least “one comprehensive accounting of what happened that day”
You can watch Inside the Uvalde Response on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube Channel, and the PBS App.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | on May 24th, 2022, a gun, a woman, a gunman. |
| 0:05.0 | On May 24th, 2022, |
| 0:10.0 | a gunman armed with an AR-15 style rifle entered Rob Elementary School in Yovaldi, Texas. |
| 0:20.0 | And help from my teachers, I feel like their shots. Like most schools in the US, the students and teachers there had practiced active shooter drills many times. |
| 0:30.0 | They knew what to do. |
| 0:32.0 | But a new investigation reveals that scores of law enforcement officers who responded that day did not. |
| 0:39.0 | It was a horrific thing and we lost no matter what. |
| 0:50.0 | Inside the Yavaldi response is a new film from Frontline, produced in collaboration with ProPublica and the Texas Tribune. |
| 0:54.0 | The film draws on real-time first-hand accounts of what went on that day |
| 0:59.0 | and where the police response failed. |
| 1:01.0 | I don't hear any screaming. |
| 1:03.0 | Maybe this place is empty. |
| 1:05.0 | Children were instructed to be quiet. |
| 1:07.6 | That is what their teaching is during these kinds of drills. |
| 1:10.5 | I'm joined by one of the journalists behind the investigation |
| 1:13.4 | Loemy Creel, an investigative reporter for ProPublica and the Texas Tribune. |
| 1:18.9 | I'm also joined by Juanita Sabios, the film's director. I'm Rene Errinson Roth, editor-in-chief and executive producer of Frontline, and this is the |
| 1:28.5 | Frontline Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation committed to excellence in journalism and by the Frontline Journalism Fund with major support from John and Joanne Hagler. |
| 1:46.0 | Support for Frontline Dispatch comes from the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, |
| 1:50.0 | dedicated to providing compassionate care and cancer specialists who are experienced in the cancer you have. |
| 1:55.0 | When you hear the word cancer, their team is ready. |
| 1:58.0 | Learn more at mass general.org |
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