Report on Uvalde school shooting shows border officials had no access to school map or keys

(CBS News Texas) – When U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel arrived at the scene of the worst school massacre in Texas history, no one could find a map or the keys needed to access critical areas of the building, according to a federal report released Thursday.

Although the 18-year-old gunman opened fire from a barricaded classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, only one of the 188 CBP officers on the scene had a Halligan tool – a device that can be used to force open the locked door.

Amid the chaos, some victims with gunshot wounds were placed on a school bus without first receiving medical attention, the report said. The victims survived, but the report criticized that officials did not provide them with immediate medical attention.

The revelations about the shooting, which killed 19 students and two teachers, were published in a 203-page report that contained the results of a two-year internal investigation by CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the agency’s oversight body.

CBP said its review was designed to determine whether its personnel followed the law in their response and how the agency’s response could be improved if officers were called upon to respond to similar incidents in the future.

In the absence of a strong operational commander, federal officials had great difficulty identifying a leader on the ground.

“No police officer ever clearly established command authority at the school during the incident, resulting in delays, inaction and potentially additional deaths,” the report said. Because there was no command and control framework, investigators found that responders were tasked on an “ad hoc basis” at the request of local police or on their own initiative.

CBP determined that officers who arrived on the scene had not violated any internal policies or laws, the agency said in a statement on Thursday. Among the officers who located and killed the shooter in the classroom were members of the Border Patrol’s tactical unit and the Border Patrol’s search, trauma and rescue unit.

The agency said it has taken several actions in response to the investigation, including updating agency policies, expanding the pool of agency employees who receive incident management training and assessing the need for additional tools such as equipment to break down locked doors. Officials said they have also issued guidelines to better collaborate with state and local law enforcement in responding to shootings and similar incidents.

“As our report shows, we are committed to working with our federal, state and local partners to ensure our brave officers and agents have effective training, policy guidance, equipment and legal authority to respond to critical incidents,” acting CBP Chief Troy Miller said in a statement Thursday.

The Uvalde shooting “created tremendous logistical and tactical challenges that severely tested the resources and capabilities of responding officers and agencies,” the investigation said. It also concluded that the agency’s existing training on active response procedures for shootings “did not adequately prepare responding personnel for this situation.”

The report found that efforts by multiple investigative agencies — including the FBI and Texas Rangers — to secure evidence in the immediate hours after the shooting resulted in a “fragmented investigation of the crime scene.” Text messages used by CBP employees during the incident were not released to the agency until months after the incident. “Coordination with other investigative agencies could prevent this failure in the future,” investigators added.

According to CBP, dozens of special agents were involved in the investigation, reviewed thousands of hours of video footage and conducted more than 200 interviews.

The CBP report is the latest investigation to slam authorities’ response to the Uvalde shooting. In January, the Justice Department released the results of its own investigation, saying the response to the shooting revealed “cascading failures in leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training.”

Pete Arredondo, the former Uvalde Schools Police Chief who was on the scene during the shooting, was charged earlier this year with 10 counts of child endangerment and child abandonment stemming from his role that day. He has pleaded not guilty.

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