Photo: CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP/Getty Images
By: The opinion Posted Aug 31, 2023, 16:38 pm EDT
Uvalde (Texas) Mayor Don McLaughlin accused District Attorney Christina Mitchell of covering up information about the May 24, 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School that left two teachers and 19 students dead, and required him to resign.
In a letter published Wednesday, McLaughlin said Mitchell is blocking the city’s investigation into the slaying.perpetrated by Salvador Ramos, 18 years old.
Mitchell, prosecutor for the 38th judicial district, which includes Uvalde, heads the criminal investigation into the shooting and the police response to it. He has said that he is still collecting evidence and intends to present his results by the end of the year.
In his letter, McLaughlin explained that the city hired outside investigator Jesse Prado to look into the controversial actions of local police on the day of the shooting.
The initial response to the shooting has been widely criticized because local agents waited in a hallway instead of storming into the classroom where Ramos was, who was ultimately shot by federal agents.
The Republican mayor said he believed that Mitchell has withheld information requested by Prado because his own lead investigator, Shayne Gilland, was one of the officers who were at the school during the massacre.
McLaughlin made the accusation after the city on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to gain access to records related to the shooting.
“Fifteen months have passed since this tragedy, and I feel the families and our community deserve answers,” the mayor said in a statement attached to the lawsuit, adding that Mitchell “has been involved in a cover-up in connection with the investigation of the City on the Robb School Tragedy.
The Uvalde shooting is the second deadliest in a school in the last decade, after what happened in 2012 at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown (Connecticut), where 26 people lost their lives.
For 77 minutes, [el tirador] deliberately executed 19 children and two teachersas well as wounding 18 others, before being shot dead by members of the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit
Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was fired in August after state officials blamed him for the delay in confronting the gunman, told investigators the day after the shooting that he decided to focus on evacuating the school. due to the type of firearm the gunman used.
19 students and two teachers killed
On May 24, 2022, Salvador Ramos, the perpetrator of the massacre, fled from his grandmother’s house in a pickup truck and drove to Robb Elementary.
He arrived at the school at 11:40 am wearing a tactical vest, armed with an AR-15 rifle and carrying a backpack with extra ammunition clips.
He entered the school through a back door and walked through a corridor until he reached a fourth grade classroom, which he locked the door, killed 19 students and two teachers who were inside.
More than an hour later, the agents shot the attacker to death.
With information from EFE
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