AUSTIN, Texas — In this week's edition of Texas This Week, the Texas House Committee Investigating the Robb Elementary School Shooting released its preliminary report about what happened to the 19 children and their two teachers who were murdered on May 24. The 77-page report lays out systemic failures across several areas. Vice chair of that committee, State Rep. Joe Moody (D-El Paso) joined KVUE to discuss the report.
Ashley Goudeau: 376. That's the number of law enforcement officers who descended upon Robb Elementary School that day. And yet it took more than an hour for them to enter the classroom. The report notes there was a lack of clear leadership, but is that really reason enough to excuse the lack of urgency by those officers to get into the classroom?
State Rep. Joe Moody: "No, I think there is, you know, there's bad decision-making when you determine that this is a barricaded subject versus an active shooter, that changes the approach. And when you talk about, you know, nearly 400 officers there, right, you're talking about maybe the first 20, 30 that have the opportunity to gather facts as accurately as possible because they're closer into the situation. You know, 200-plus of those officers that come on scene don't have any information or have bad information, misinformation, because they're not near enough to the incident. So it was incumbent upon those who had access, had the closest access to that hallway to do more to evaluate the situation better, to set up an incident command where information can flow better. Because, you know, what we heard from experts was if you don't have the most up-to-date, accurate information, you cannot make decisions that are going to end up solving the problem. And so those things compounded themselves in that hallway over and over and over and over. And that's really what the report brings to light."
Goudeau: It is hard for us to receive, it was hard to read, but 100 gunshots fired by that gunman, the report says, likely before any officers even entered the building. But do you believe that if the officers, when they got there, had acted more quickly, some lives could have been saved?
Moody: "You know, it's one of those facts that it's impossible for us to ascertain and state with any certainty. But it is, in my opinion, likely that some some lives could have been saved if that delay was not in place. Now, we are going to await the medical examiner's reports. I do not purport to be a medical professional. I do know what I reviewed in those files, over 48,000 records. So I understand what happened, when it happened. But having a medical examiner's report about how each victim responded to the wounds that, the injuries that they sustained is something that we'll need to wait upon to have a certain answer. And that was one thing we want to do with this report is not guess, and if we didn't know something, don't state it as a fact. I think too much since May 25, the investigation forward has been done and too much of the handling and information has been done in a way where we do not discern between what is verifiable and not verifiable. That's in this report as well. We believe that law enforcement should have been more responsible with that investigation and with the information that they had at their disposal."
Goudeau: Among those systemic failures, the report talks about school safety protocols. So, from the classroom door not locking properly to issues with the Wi-Fi in the building to school personnel becoming desensitized to alerts, how do you combat that and ensure parents not only in Uvalde, but across Texas, that their children will be safe when school starts in a month?
Moody: "I think that's one of the largest tasks that we have in front of us. And it's why in that section, it begins with a recitation of how many thousands of buildings we have across Texas and how different they are. You know, I have begun the process of discussing with our local school districts here to review this report to understand it. It's not like they have not worked on school security before, but this is new information that maybe they need to think about in this current context. And I've asked them what they think, the deficiencies they have on their campuses, what are ways that we can help. Because this is the place where we need to, we have a lot of work to do. When discussing this with the teachers in Uvalde, you know, some of that was some of the most difficult testimony to hear. And let me be clear, the teachers on that campus are are some of the most heroic people I have ever met. And what they did to follow protocols that day, you know, they did, as much. if not more. than anyone else. And so our point to them wasn't that there was, you know, because what was happening on that campus in terms of propping open doors or this or that or whatever that's happening everywhere, that's not unique to their campus. And so what we, what I tried to express to them was this was not something to lay blame at their feet, but to understand that maybe the rules we put in place don't understand fully the reality that they have as teachers in a classroom like that. Or, and so we need to do better. It is incumbent on us to do better to reflect our safety procedures in a way that work with them. Think about when you hear teachers that heard a shooter on campus, you hear gunfire on campus and the protocols say, we want you to go outside of your room to check the door to see if it's locked for sure. Well the threat could be on the other side of that door. And multiple of those teachers told us that doesn't make sense. Why isn't there some way to, you know, functionally close these doors to the inside so we don't expose ourselves to harm? And so those are very real things that we have to consider. And I think that in that is, as a parent of three young children and two of which are going to be going back to school here in just a couple of weeks, certainly something that I'm thinking about."
Goudeau: I want to talk to you also about the shooter. Now, according to the report, there were clear warning signs, even him earning the nickname 'school shooter.' He dropped out of school, he had issues at the jobs where he worked. And yet all that you found is that there were no reports to law enforcement or intervention. So we can talk about the need for more mental health resources, but how do you make sure that people who need those resources actually get them?
Moody: "Well, I think that's when we talk about this report pointing to complex problems. This is someone who was essentially nonexistent in school. And so to the extent there were services available or safety nets available in school to capture an individual that had these issues, he wasn't present. So it's hard to capture someone or understand what they're doing or understand what's going on with them if they're just nonexistent. He, you know, certainly was someone that wasn't participating in any way, shape or form. And so, what do you do there? What do you do when someone is making all these comments in their personal space and, you know, very clearly developing a pattern that's troubling, but things are either not reported or if they are reported, they're not acted upon, you know, in the social media world. And so those are problems. What happens when you have the attacker, you know, talking about suicide, contemporaneous with purchasing weapons, but no one identifies that as an issue? So, look, a lot of this information is held in the hands of private individuals and never makes its way out. And that's something that we all need to wake up to. You can't turn a blind eye to something that seems problematic. You know, one of the most troubling things I read and one of the most callous things I read in this entire investigation, and it's in the report, is when the attacker text messages a friend in Germany that he had just shot his grandmother and he intended to go shoot up an elementary school. Her response was one word and it was 'cool.' If that doesn't say something about where we are as a society, I don't know what does. We need to be more responsive and understand that these signs matter. And if we're able to identify them and report them, then you can actually curtail violence like this."
Goudeau: The conversation, though, about this shooting is largely focused on law enforcement failures, the school safety protocols, but many, many Uvalde parents and frankly, Texans all across the state also want to talk about guns. Someone with no shooting experience was able to massacre 19 children and two teachers and officers were concerned or afraid to confront him because of the gun he had. The reality is talking about guns, it is a political conversation. And for many Republicans state leaders, guns are a nonstarter. But do we need to have that conversation?
Moody: "Absolutely. If we're not having that conversation next to school safety, next to police response, next to how information is handled in an investigation, next to mental health, if you're not talking about all those things together then you're doing a disservice not only to the community and Uvalde, but to every single community across Texas. One of the facts that is pointed to here in the section on the attacker is that there was no legal impediment to him acquiring two high-powered rifles, 60, six-zero, magazines and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Now, that is a fact. This committee was tasked with ferreting out the facts. That's a fact. There is also a fact that he tried to acquire that, those weapons prior to turning 18, which was against the law. And I think this is important to note in this conversation. This is a concrete example of how our laws can and did work, but they were not sufficient. Sometimes, and I've been in this conversation around gun policy for quite some time now, a lot of the argument we hear is that bad people are going to do bad things and you can't make a law that's going to stop them. But that's built on this fallacy that people that want to do bad things operate in a different world than you and I. They operate in the same world as you and I. So if there's an impediment that exists, it exists for them just as much as it exists for us. And so in this instance, the legal impediment was removed when he turned the age of 18. Had this law been 21, I have a very strong feeling that this attacker does not end up with those weapons and you've got three more years to figure out how to identify the problems that he's encountering and circumvent them and to stop them. But I would say this is a concrete example of how our laws can work, but they're not sufficient."
Goudeau: What's your commitment to the people of Texas going into the 2023 legislative session?
Moody: "You know, when I left the room Sunday afternoon in Uvalde, after the families were kind enough to invite us to meet with them and to sit with them and talk with them, and mostly I wanted to listen to them, I left them with the same promise that I gave to my community of El Paso: that I'll never stop working on this. It means too much to too many to make our communities safer. And whether that's working on gun safety or working on law enforcement issues or working on school security, all of those things. I made a commitment to them and the same promise I made to the folks here in El Paso: that I won't I won't stop working with them. And I will carry their voice with me to the Capitol in 2023."
You can watch Ashley Goudeau's full interview with State Rep. Joe Moody (D-El Paso) here:
PEOPLE ARE ALSO READING: