When mass shootings devastate communities, investigators often set out to learn what happened by interviewing a wide array of people. What’s made public, if anything, rarely details the intimate, candid and emotional responses of the survivors and the first responders.
Today, ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and the PBS series FRONTLINE are jointly publishing an in-depth examination of the response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, using a trove of raw materials from a state investigation whose findings have yet to be released.
The records include investigative interviews with officers, emergency responders, teachers and children, as well as video footage, audio recordings and photographs. Using these records, we reconstructed the day’s events, showing in painstaking detail how law enforcement’s lack of preparation contributed to delays in confronting the shooter on May 24, 2022. Nineteen children and two teachers died that day. Dozens of others will forever contend with scars, both physical and emotional.
