Uvalde school didn’t release most of its shooting-related documents but says it was a mistake

HOUSTON (AP) — The Uvalde school district released only a small fraction of the documents it said would be made public regarding the 2022 Robb Elementary School massacre, with district officials in the small Texas town saying this week it was an honest mistake that they were fixing.

The mix-up was revealed during an Uvalde school board meeting on Monday when the attorney for the district said his law firm mistakenly failed to make public all documents as had been promised in a legal settlement. He blamed it on “reasons that are our firm’s business, but it is our error.”

“We are not in any way trying to hide anything. We are not in any way trying to not release things,” attorney Robb Decker said.

Earlier this month, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District released more than 3,500 pages following years of litigation. The school district had sought to withhold documents connected to the attack that killed 19 students and two teachers, one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. The school board had voted in July to release all the district’s records and end the lawsuit pursued by media organizations to make the information public.

The botched release was another misstep for district leaders who have been criticized for fighting the lawsuit and not making this information public sooner.

School district members on Monday regretted having to again apologize to family members of the victims and the community for an error following the shooting. The school district’s police and other law enforcement agencies have also been heavily scrutinized for their delayed response as terrified students inside a classroom called 911 and parents begged officers to go in.

Family members including Jesse Rizo, the uncle of 9-year-old victim Jackie Cazares and a member of the school board, were among those pushing to see the records.

“There’s no excuse for that sir,” Rizo said. “You can call it a mistake, you can call it an error. It’s a costly error, a very costly error.”

This week’s revelation means that around nine of every 10 records and emails were not released on Aug. 11, when the school board had said it had made public all its records. Board members said about 26,000 more pages of documents and 8,600 more emails were expected to be released. More than 3,400 pages of the withheld documents were released as of Wednesday. Decker said all would be made available to the public by next week.

Still, many of the documents released by Wednesday offered few new revelations.

Several of the newly released emails focused on efforts by the supervisor of Amy Marin to clear her name after she had been wrongly accused by the Texas Department of Public Safety of using a rock to keep open the campus door that was used by the shooter to get inside the school. Investigators later said Marin did close the door but it did not lock.

Other new emails show how in the days after the shooting, superintendents from around the country offered support to Hal Harrell, who was the Uvalde schools superintendent at the time.

“I know how painful today is and overwhelming with the multitude of compassionate decisions you have to make,” said Janet Robinson, who led the schools in Newtown during the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre.

Other emails from the public were critical of the police and Pete Arredondo, the former Uvalde schools police chief who was fired and indicted for his role in the police response.

“Why in God’s name hasn’t Peter Arredondo been fired yet, for stopping the police from entering the room the ACTIVE shooter was in till nearly an hour later?” according to one email sent three days after the shooting.

Media organizations, including The Associated Press, sued the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and Uvalde County in 2022. A Texas appeals court in July upheld a lower court’s ruling that the records must be made public. Uvalde County released its records a day after the school district released its documents.

Last year, city officials in Uvalde released body camera footage and recordings of 911 calls. Uvalde, a city of about 15,000 people, is about 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of San Antonio.

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