The intention of the committee and its professional staff is to meet the families of the 21 victims privately in Uvalde and provide them with a hard copy of the preliminary report and a link to the video, a source close to the committee said. The committee also plans to answer questions from families about the findings, the source said.
Burrows pushed for the release of the video to the public amid scrutiny of the police response.
“I can tell people all day what I saw, the committee can tell people all day what we saw, but it’s very different to see it for yourself, and we think it’s is very important,” Burrows said.
However, he said last week that he was prohibited from doing so because he had signed a nondisclosure agreement with DPS. He also released a letter in which DPS said he agreed the video would bring “clarity” to what happened, but explained that the Uvalde District Attorney “objected to the broadcast of the video”.
CNN asked Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee Friday and Sunday for comment on why she objects to the release of the video, but did not hear a response.
What the video and report will show
The video and preliminary report should clarify what the police were actually doing while they waited in the hallway and will contradict previous public statements and official reports.
However, the source close to the committee said that this account is not true and did not happen. Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin also refuted the account as untrue.
And on Monday night, ALERRT deputy director John Curnutt said their findings were based on two statements by an officer which were later contradicted by a third statement.
“At the time we released our initial after-action, the information we had on this particular officer came from the officer’s two previous statements given to investigators,” he said in a statement. “We were unaware that just before we released our first after-action, the officer made a third statement to investigators that was different from the first two statements.”
Additionally, the hallway video of the response is “heartbreaking,” said Tony Plohetski, an Austin American-Statesman reporter who watched the surveillance footage.
The video begins shortly after the shooter entered the school at 11:33 a.m. In the video, the 18-year-old shooter walks into a classroom and “you hear a hail of gunfire,” Plohetski said. A few minutes later, a group of law enforcement officers arrive in the room and there is another gunfight.
“You see the officers getting knocked down. One of them touches his head,” and suspects an injury, he said.
Over the next hour of the video, officers converge on the scene and prepare with helmets, assault rifles, ballistic shields and tear gas canisters. But they do not act.
“Essentially they sit there for an hour as those minutes go by,” he said. “It’s not until 12:50 p.m. that we see these officers walk into that classroom, come through the door and shoot the shooter.”
The reporter said the video intensifies questions about the response from local, state and federal agencies on site.
“As to why it was handled the way he did and why the police didn’t act with a greater sense of urgency, I don’t think we’ve found out the truth about that yet,” he said. he declared.
“This video, once it finally becomes public, is going to be very disturbing to a lot of people and I think will really add to the tragedy that happened that day.”
CNN’s Eric Levenson contributed to this report.
