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'Cowards': Outrage after new Uvalde footage shows cops waiting in school hallway for almost AN HOUR

The video from inside the school shows armed officers standing in a hallway 19 minutes after the gunman walked in

UVALDE, TEXAS: Recently released surveillance footage from Robb Elementary School shows what exactly happened during the May 24 shooting. It shows multiple officers standing inside the building with rifles and at least one ballistic shield, 19 minutes after the gunman arrived. However, they didn’t enter the classroom for more than an hour.

KVUE and its news partners at the Austin American-Statesman exclusively obtained the video from inside the school which investigators believe will prove to be an important development as it clearly shows the cops had more than enough weapons and protection to enter the classroom. After the images from the video went viral online, there has been outrage from every corner and social media has largely criticized the cops for their inaction.

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An angry user wrote, "Active shooter training says get the f**k in there and stop the threat. This complete disaster of a police department makes me sick. Cowards. #UvaldePolice #UvaldeCoverUp." Another questioned the cover-up of the video, "It’s a shame that Uvalde Police didn’t fight just as hard to save the lives of those slaughtered children as they are trying to keep their body cams secret. Hmm…I wonder what those cameras recorded that’s so threatening to them?"

Meanwhile, top criminal defense attorney Sara Azari blasted the Uvalde police and Texas officials for not releasing the body cam footage.

What does the footage show?

The surveillance video was captured in a wide-angle camera that shows the inside of the school building’s northwest entrance. At 11.33 am on May 24, the gunman walked through the entrance, headed south toward the two classrooms on the left, and started firing bullets from his rifle in the hallway. He also fired some shots outside the school, but no one was hit. A boy could be seen peeking around the corner at the northeast end of the hallway, apparently trying to return to class from a nearby bathroom. The boy heard the gunfire and ran away.

Within a minute, the gunman entered classroom 111. He didn’t appear to encounter a locked door and began shooting. He then walked out the classroom door and went back again. For the next three minutes, he fired inside a classroom filled with children. The first three officers entered the school at 11.52 am -- two from the Uvalde Police Department and one from the school district’s force. All were carrying handguns. In a few more minutes, Uvalde police chief Pete Arredondo and seven more officers arrived. This led to the shooter opening fire at the first three officers closest to the two classrooms, forcing all of them to bolt to either end of the hallway. The officers, including Arredondo, remained in these positions for the rest of the standoff, never firing a shot.

As per the footage, a special agent from the Texas Department of Public Safety arrived around 20 minutes after the shooting started. He immediately asked, "Are there still kids in the classrooms? If there is, then we just need to go in." An officer replied, “It is unknown at this time.” He got back saying, “Y’all don’t know if there’s kids in there? If there’s kids in there we need to go in there.” “Whoever is in charge will determine that,” came the reply. “Well, there’s kids over here,” he said. “So I’m getting kids out.”

It's worth noting that Salvador Ramos, who had just shot his grandmother in the face, walked through an unlocked door and encountered no interference as he wielded an AR-15 he had bought eight days before the attack. At the end of the 77 minutes, two teachers and 19 students, including the daughter of one of the officers stationed in the hallway, were dead. Others sustained serious physical injuries. It was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.