“The review will be comprehensive, it will be transparent and it will be independent,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Wednesday.
“We will be assessing what happened that day, we will be doing site visits at the school, we will be conducting interviews of an extremely wide variety of stakeholders, witnesses, families, law enforcement, government officials, school officials and we will be reviewing the resources that were made available in the aftermath.”
The Justice Department traditionally relies on people outside the department with law enforcement expertise and on-the-ground experience with mass-casualty events to participate in reviews.
“We want the truthful answers. We want to be transparent, and we will when it comes out. We have nothing to hide.”
Besides the federal DOJ investigation, Texas state House Rep. Dustin Burrows said DPS members will be among the witnesses at a Uvalde Investigative Committee hearing set for Thursday.
Victims were trapped with the gunman for more than an hour
As many as 19 law enforcement officers were inside the school for more than 45 minutes before the suspect was finally killed, the Texas DPS said.
It’s not clear how many of the 21 slain victims could have been saved had police stormed the classrooms sooner.
“I’ve been told that they’re law enforcement and we’re not. We’re not going to be entitled to it,” the mayor said. “I’ve asked everyone involved for a briefing at one point or another.”
‘There is no excuse for their actions’
Arnulfo Reyes, a teacher who was shot twice at Robb Elementary, said he was furious about how the tragedy was handled.
“You’re supposed to protect and serve … There is no excuse for their actions. And I will never forgive them,” the fourth-grade teacher said.
Describing the first moments of the shooting, Reyes said he and his students heard gunshots and he told them to “get under the table and act like you’re asleep.”
“As they were doing that, and I was gathering them under the table and told them to act like they’re going to sleep, is about the time when I turned around and saw him standing there.”
The gunman opened fire, striking Reyes; one bullet went through his arm and lung, and another hit his back, ABC reported.
Reyes couldn’t move after being shot, he said, and the shooter then turned his gun on the students.
Officers could be heard outside the classroom, and a child in another classroom pleaded for police to help, Reyes said. But Reyes thinks by that time, officers had retired down a hallway, he told ABC.
“One of the students from the next-door classroom was saying, ‘Officer, we’re in here. We’re in here,'” he said. “But they had already left.”
When the Border Patrol unit eventually came inside, “it was just bullets everywhere,” he told ABC.
When asked if he had a message for the students’ parents, Reyes tearfully replied: “I’m sorry. I tried my best from what I was told to do. Please don’t be angry with me.”
He also said change is needed to prevent such school massacres in the future.
“You can give us all the training you want, but … laws have to change,” he said. “It won’t ever change unless they change the laws.”
CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz, Rebekah Riess, Shimon Prokupecz, Rosa Flores, Rosalina Nieves, Paula Reid, Whitney Wild, Eric Levenson, Jason Hanna, Amanda Musa, Tina Burnside and DJ Judd contributed to this report.
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