- News outlets this week published footage from inside Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.
- The footage showed police outside the classroom the gunman was barricaded in with fourth graders for over an hour.
- Some parents of victims were upset the footage was released before it was shown to them.
Families of the victims of the Uvalde, Texas, shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead are upset that news outlets shared the leaked 77-minute surveillance video from inside Robb Elementary School as the gunman carried out the attack.
The video was published by the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE-TV on Tuesday and subsequently shared by other media outlets. It had been edited to blur the image of a child who ran to safety after encountering the gunman in a hallway and to remove the sounds of children screaming. The sounds of gunfire were not removed.
The video showed the gunman entering the building after crashing his truck and then entering a classroom. Gun shots can be heard firing for several minutes. The video shows dozens of police entering the building and waiting for over an hour outside the classroom the gunman was barricaded in. At one point, an officer stops at a hand sanitizer dispenser shortly before police breached the classroom.
It also showed some officers running away after gunshots from inside the classroom ring out.
Some families of the victims were upset that the video was published before police had shown it to those whose loved ones were actually involved. They expected to be shown the footage on Sunday, when the Texas House committee investigating the attack is set to release their findings, before it was released to the public.
"We get blindsided by a leak," Angel Garza, the father of a 10-year-old girl, Amerie Jo, who died in the attack, said, according to CNN. "Who do you think you are to release footage like that of our children who can't even speak for themselves, but you want to go ahead and air their final moments to the entire world? What makes you think that's OK?"
Another parent of a victim, Kimberly Rubio, said the gunshots in particular were hard for her to hear, the Associated Press reported. Her 10-year-old daughter Lexi was killed in the attack.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin also criticized the decision to publish the video.
"There was no reason for the families to have to see that," McLaughlin said, according to AP. "They needed to see the video but they didn't need to see the gunman come in or hear the gunshots."
The Austin American-Statesman published a story explaining why it and KVUE decided to jointly publish the video. The article noted how long it took police to engage the gunman and the lack of transparency that has surrounded the police response, including the denials of public information requests.
"We have to bear witness to history, and transparency with unrelenting reporting is a way to bring change," Manny Garcia, the paper's ethics and standards editor, writes, adding: "The truth always wins, maybe not on our clock, but the truth always prevails."
Uvalde Police have been under intense scrutiny since the May 24 shooting. They've been accused of not acting quickly enough to intervene while the gunman was barricaded inside a classroom of fourth graders, as well as changing their story of what happened several times.
Families of the victims have also expressed rage and frustration over the police response and the lack of transparency that followed the attack. Videos taken from outside the school showed parents screaming at police to go into the building while their kids were still trapped inside.