A judge in Texas has put a seal on the autopsy reports of the 19 students and two teachers who were killed in the Uvalde school shooting. This means that some questions about how the police handled the situation will not be answered until the investigation is over.
On Friday, 38th District Court Judge Camile Dubose told the records to be sealed and given to the local district attorney. Families of the victims and the general public won’t be able to see the records, which probably show if any victims could have been saved if law enforcement had acted sooner.
Security footage from the May 24 massacre shows that police waited 77 minutes before trying to open the doors to two classrooms where the shooter was trying to kill innocent children and teachers.
In their motion to seal the reports, prosecutors said that letting the public know about the injuries caused by the shooting at Robb Elementary would “unnecessarily flood the airwasy with highly emotionally charged information,” which would make it hard to get a fair trial. Prosecutors also said that the autopsy reports might have information that needs to be kept secret until the shooting investigation is over. It’s not clear when the investigation will be done, but leaders in the state have said it could take up to 18 months.
Texas judge seals autopsy reports of Uvalde school shooting victims https://t.co/jVJ0eTDOjI pic.twitter.com/ZVaCmcy3Ea
— New York Post (@nypost) November 8, 2022
Six months have passed since Salvador Ramos, who was only 15, opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, killing 21 people. The autopsy reports are now done. The 18-year-old gunman terrorized two fourth-grade classrooms next to each other for more than an hour before police entered the rooms and shot and killed him.
Roland Gutierrez, a state senator whose district includes Uvalde, expressed his anger to the families of the victims, who have already had to deal with how badly law enforcement handled the situation.
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“Everything for the last six months has been hidden by this agency and by people in power to cover up their failures,” he stated. “It’s important to find out if those children were alive, and at what time.”
At least four of the victims were still alive when federal police broke into the classroom and shot and killed the gunman. One person died on the way to a hospital in San Antonio, two people died at Uvalde Memorial hospital, and a fourth person died in an ambulance outside the school.
No one knows for sure if any of the victims might have lived if police had broken into the classrooms earlier and gotten them medical help faster.