Editor’s Note: Our goal is to bring to light what happened at Robb Elementary. The video footage, audio and events described in this story are disturbing. Read more about our decision to publish here. This exclusive story and video are being made available free of charge as a public service. If you value strong journalism from USA TODAY, support us by subscribing.
The gunman walks into Robb Elementary School unimpeded, moments after spraying bullets from his semi-automatic rifle outside the school and after desperate calls to 911 from inside and outside the school.
He slows down to peek around a corner in a hallway and flips back his hair before proceeding toward classrooms 111 and 112.
Seconds later, a boy with neatly combed hair and glasses exits a bathroom to head back to his class. As he turns the corner, he notices the gunman standing by the classroom door and unloading a barrage.
The boy turns and runs back into the bathroom.
The gunman enters one of the classrooms. Children scream. The gunfire continues, stops, then starts again. Stops, then starts again. And again. And again.
It is almost three minutes before three police officers arrive in the hallway and rush toward the classrooms, crouching down. Then, a burst of gunfire. One officer grabs the back of his head. They quickly retreat to the end of the hallway, below a school surveillance camera.
A 77-minute video recording captured from this vantage point, along with body camera footage from one of the responding officers, shows in excruciating detail what happened when dozens of local, state and federal officers entered the school, heavily armed, clad in body armor, helmets and some with protective shields.
The video was obtained exclusively by The Austin American-Statesman, part of the USA TODAY Network, and TV station KVUE. USA TODAY published an edited version of the video to show how the law enforcement response unfolded.
In the video, officers walk back and forth in the hallway, some leaving the camera frame, then reappearing, others training their weapons toward the classroom, talking, making cellphone calls, sending texts or looking at floor plans. None enters or attempts to enter the classrooms.
Even after hearing at least four shots from the classrooms 45 minutes after police arrived, they waited.
They asked for keys to one of the classrooms. (It was unlocked, investigators said later.) They brought tear gas and gas masks. They carried a sledgehammer. And still, they waited.
Officers rushed into the classroom and killed the gunman an hour and 14 minutes after police arrived on the scene. Nineteen fourth graders and their two teachers died in the massacre May 24, days before the end of the school year.
The video tells in real time the brutal story of how heavily armed officers failed to immediately launch a cohesive and aggressive response to stop the shooter and save more children if possible. It reinforces the trauma of those parents, friends and bystanders who were outside the school and pleaded with police to do something, and for those survivors who quietly called 911 from inside the classroom to beg for help.
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