Previously unreleased video, audio and interviews show for the first time how the medical response faltered after police finally confronted the Robb Elementary shooter.
The chaotic scene exemplified the flawed medical response — captured in video footage, investigative documents, interviews and radio traffic — that experts said undermined the chances of survival for some victims of the May 24 massacre. Two teachers and 19 students died.
Another student, Jacklyn “Jackie” Cazares, 9, likely survived for more than an hour after being shot and was promptly placed in an ambulance after medics finally gained access to her classroom. She died in transport. Although helicopters were available, none were used to carry victims directly from the school. At least four patients who survived were flown by helicopter to a more fully equipped trauma center in San Antonio after first being driven by ambulance to a nearby hospital or airport.
The Texas Rangers, an arm of the state Department of Public Safety, are investigating what went wrong in Uvalde, including whether any victims might have survived if they had received prompt medical care. The local district attorney has said she will use that investigation to determine whether to charge anyone with a crime, including law enforcement officers.
The flawed coordination among police and medical crews echoes missteps during other mass shootings, despite the development of recommended practices after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School. In several of those cases, the communication problems resulted in delays in getting medical care for victims.
“My dad had just told her how beautiful she looked,” Adalynn Ruiz, 23, recalled in a text message to a reporter. The gunman got there first, entering Mireles’ classroom and firing his AR-15-style rifle. Officers rushed into the school minutes later and approached her classroom, but they retreated after the gunman fired through the door, grazing two of them.
Inside Rooms 111 and 112, students anxiously tried to get officers’ attention. They knew that for Mireles, there was little time to spare.“We as a nation are not ready” “If you don’t have a system, the whole response goes awry,” said Bob Harrison, a former police chief and a homeland security researcher at the Rand Corp., a think tank based in California.
Experts said that the Uvalde shooting response appeared to lack both an overall incident commander and someone clearly in charge of coordinating the emergency medical response. It’s unclear what information Stephens had about how many victims first responders should expect to find. Multiple medics expressed confusion over who was in charge of the medical response and where to go.
The city of Uvalde did not respond to detailed questions about the communication between police and medics or about its training for mass shootings, citing ongoing litigation. But a spokesperson said in an email that the city’s police department has not conducted any formal training with Uvalde EMS, a nonprofit that provides emergency medical services for the city and county.
“We didn’t know the numbers of patients, number of injuries, number of fatalities,” Martinez recalled in interviews with investigators. “Nobody was relaying that.”The crew of an AirLIFE helicopter grounded in Uvalde for maintenance heard the unfolding chaos on the radio and offered to help. The crew later told investigators that the emergency responders they talked to had rejected their assistance repeatedly. They did not provide the names of those responders.
One local medic later complained to investigators that the response was so chaotic that emergency crews were stepping on victims. A girl matching the description of Jackie — wearing the same red shirt and black shorts she’d had on earlier in the day — was placed in one of the two ambulances at the school. The 9-year-old, described by her family as a “firecracker” for being so full of life, died on the way to the hospital.
Uvalde is more than 80 miles from the nearest Level 1 trauma centers, which provide the most advanced care for seriously injured patients. Spokespeople for the ambulance helicopter companies, Air Methods, which includes AirLIFE, and Air Evac Lifeteam, both of which responded to the shooting, said they rely on local medics to decide who should be airlifted. They declined to respond to detailed questions.Dread set in when Aviles felt softness on the back of the child’s head, indicating a significant injury.
State records show that Neese did not have an EMT or paramedic license in Texas, but he performed CPR on Xavier for more than 30 minutes while a medic tried to treat the boy’s wounds. The ambulance diverted to Medina Regional Hospital in Hondo, about 40 miles from Uvalde, where doctors declared the child dead shortly after 2 p.m., according to his family.Hospital officials did not respond to a request for comment and neither did Neese.
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