How a false tale of police heroism in Uvalde spread and unraveled

UVALDE — Standing on a darkened street in front of Robb Elementary School, while some of the 21 massacre victims still lay inside, Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez spun a harrowing account of police heroism in a series of national network interviews.

“The one thing I have really got to stress and praise is our brave men and women that arrived here, went into that school knowing there was an active shooter,” Olivarez told ABC News shortly after a hearse crept behind him. “It just shows the braveness, the heroism from these law enforcement officers who went in there.”

His words helped establish a false narrative about the May 24 law enforcement response that would be amplified by officers from multiple agencies to top public officials, from Washington and across Texas, including U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Gov. Greg Abbott: The officers who responded to the Robb Elementary shooting were heroes.

“We stand in awe of the courageous law enforcement officers, including members of our United States Border Patrol, who ran into danger at such great personal risk and saved many children’s lives,” Mayorkas said on May 25 in a videotaped statement that has not been updated.

Yet interviews with bystanders and video evidence from that day contradicted the heroic storyline, an analysis by the American-Statesman found.

Near the spot where Olivarez stood, hours earlier, parents, other family members and bystanders had been screaming at scores of officers outside the school, begging them to storm the classroom and rescue the children. A few tried to rush past police but were stopped. 

Adam Martinez was among them, fearing for his 8-year-old son, Zayon, as he pleaded with assembled police officers to do something. The second grader was not injured, but the wait was agony.

“I was like, ‘Why don’t you go in?’ And they said, ‘Because we are having to deal with y’all,’” he said. “People were emotional. They were just in a state of shock or panic.”

Even so, during the ABC interview, Olivarez stayed on message: “We know that if they were not able to kill the suspect, there could have been more lives lost.”

That same night and early the next day, senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection officialsstuck to the same narrative, sharing the same false copy-and-paste Twitter message: “Risking their own lives, these agents and other officers put themselves between the shooter and children to draw the shooter’s attention away from potential victims and save lives.”

Robb Elementary teacher Arnulfo Reyes, who had been shot by the gunman and lay sprawled on the floor, feigning death while the wait for rescue dragged on, said he found the heroic spin galling.

“I did put myself between the gunman and the children,” he told the Statesman. “If that’s what they consider a hero, then I’m a hero. They were cowards.”

The morning after the shooting, Abbott, who is running for reelection this fall, assured assembled reporters and Uvalde residents that officers had saved the day.

“It could have been worse,” Abbott, a former Texas attorney general, said while surrounded by law officers. “The reason (the shooting) was not worse was because law enforcement officials did what they do. They showed amazing purpose by running toward the gunfire with the singular purpose of trying to save lives.”

The narrative began to crumble three days later when DPS officials acknowledged that officers waited more than an hour to confront and kill the gunman, even as several children in the classrooms called 911 to beg for help.

Those 72 hours robbed many Uvalde residents of their trust in the authorities and their version of the tragic attack, said Abelardo Castillo, 76, a community activist and Uvalde resident who has gotten to know many of the parents of the 19 slain children.

“The grief can only go so far, and the anger is what has come afterwards,” he said. “It’s insulting. They were no heroes, and as time goes by, people get more angry. As they have time to process, they started realizing, ‘This is bullshit,’ and there is no denying that.”

To better understand the false narrative’s impact, the Statesman examined an array of public statements made in TV interviews, on social media and in news conferences to establish that police and government leaders repeated a familiar talking point — that police responded bravely in the face of danger.  The narrative finally collapsed in July when the Statesman published a 77-minute video of officers standing outside the classrooms where the shooting took place, taking no action.

Instead of a heroic confrontation — let alone an example of standard police training to immediately engage and stop a shooter — the footage from a hallway surveillance camera showed an initial group of responding officers retreating from outside a classroom after the 18-year-old gunman fired shots at them from behind the closed door. Joined by dozens of heavily armed officers over the next hour, they waited in a nearby hallway before a team finally breached the classroom.

No video so far shows officers putting themselves between children and the gunman in the classroom.

Even after the truth began emerging, local leaders in Uvalde clung to the notion that their officers had acted admirably, asking DPS investigators to sign on to a one-page document titled “Narrative” in which they continued to press the story of police bravery.

“The total number of persons saved by the heroes that are local law enforcement and the assisting agencies is over 500,” the document stated. “Forty minutes were not wasted but each minute was used trying to save the lives of children and teachers.”

Body camera footage shows local police breaking windows and rescuing children from other classrooms. But the document makes no mention of the fact that dozens of officers massed in the school for more than an hour without taking direct action, the Statesman found.

More than an attack on the truth, the false narrative of bravery still echoes through Uvalde, where victims’ families and many residents are struggling with a lingering sense of betrayal and an erosion of trust.

The story, Martinez said, has stirred distrust of police across Uvalde. His son has been left traumatized, terrified by loud noises and suffering from nightmares. The family recently opted for virtual learning — in part because Martinez said he has lost faith that law enforcement will keep his son safe.

“Them saying they were heroes, it is a disgrace, and I’m offended,” he said. “It is clear as day that they were not heroes. … I don’t know how they sleep at night.” 

While law enforcement leaderswere praising the bravery of responding officers, fourth grade teacher Reyes was in the hospital, recovering after being shot in his classroom. 

Warned by an explosion of gunfire in adjoining Room 112, Reyes told his students in Room 111 to hide and act as if they were asleep. Then he felt a bullet pierce his left arm and fell to the floor.

Eleven students hiding under a table behind Reyes were killed soon afterward.

After his release from the hospital this summer, Reyes said, he finally saw the Statesman video showing officers waiting in the hall for more than 70 minutes. He was distraught.

“The video speaks for itself,” he said. “It’s hard for me to explain. It infuriated me more knowing they were just on the other side of the hall.”

Almost four months after the shooting, there has been no full public accounting of the origin of the fictitious accounts.

Uvalde city officials, including Mayor Don McLaughlin, declined through a spokeswoman to comment on the one-page narrative document.

Border Patrol leadership did not respond to three email requests for comment.

Olivarez did not respond to a request through a DPS spokesman for comment. DPS said through a spokesman that Olivarez was referring to the initial seven officers who entered the school hall and ran toward the classroom before taking gunfire.

Abbott has only said that he repeated information told to him by federal, state and local law enforcement, but more than three months after the tragedy, he has not identified which agencies or named the officials that the governor said “misled” him.

“As the governor has said . . . the information he originally shared was provided during a briefing by a roomful of law enforcement and public officials,” Abbott’s office said in a statement to the Statesman. “And as the governor has also said, he is livid that he was misled about the actual response to the shooting, as different accounts were spun during the briefing.”

In his first on-camera sit-down interview since the Uvalde massacre, DPS Director Steve McCraw told the Statesman Thursday that starting immediately at the scene and continuing the next day during Abbott’s briefing, two Uvalde officials he declined to name set forth the narrative of heroism. He said Olivarez repeated the information in the television interviews and that DPS Deputy Director Victor Escalon did so while briefing Abbott.

McCraw said his staff mistakenly relied on local officials to provide information instead of those from his own agency. There were 91 DPS officers on the scene, second only to the Border Patrol, with 149 officers.

“We came away from that relatively confident that, Hey, OK. Lots of children were saved. Heroic action,'” McCraw said.”The only time that narrative was countered was when we got that video back and were able to review it.”

“It was anything but heroic when in fact it was an absolute disaster,” he added.

The Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, the state’s largest police union, declined to address the now-recognized failure by officers to storm the classroom and end the massacre. In a statement issued one week after the shooting, the union published a release that highlighted instead the conclusion of the attack.

“As a law enforcement organization, we stand behind those professionals who put an end to the assault on Robb Elementary. Without the officers who breached the door and took out the murderer, this already devastating event would have lasted longer and more children would have been lost,” the organization said.

While Abbott, DPS and Border Patrolofficials have not accepted responsibility for the statements, the loudest condemnation came from a Texas House committee that investigated the shooting: “One would expect law enforcement during a briefing would be very careful to state what facts are verifiable and which ones are not,” said the report, released in July.

“Uvalde itself has paid a terrible price as it has waited for truth and waded through the shaky narrative given instead,” concluded the committee, whose leadership conducted a large share of its investigation behind closed doors, claiming the secrecy was necessary to ensure that witnesses spoke truthfully.

From the start, the Robb Elementary investigation was fraught with misinformation and misstatements.

In Uvalde, DPS officials incorrectly said that the shooter entered the school through a door that a teacher had left propped open. It turned out that the door had been shut but was unlocked. 

By 7 a.m., the day after the shooting, Olivarez returned to the network airwaves to praise the team of officers who finally broke into the classroom, saying that “it just goes to show you, they were placing their own lives between the shooter and those children.”

He also told NBC’s “Today” that “we want to offer our condolences to the families as we continue to mourn with the victims … also praising the brave law enforcement, our first responders, who arrived on scene during this active shooter situation.”

By that time, two Border Patrol officials, Chief Raul Ortiz, the agency’s head, and El Paso-based regional Chief Patrol Agent Gloria I. Chavez, had tweeted messages praising agents for facing gunfire from a barricaded subject and for putting themselves between the gunman and students. They were joined by Marsha Espinosa, assistant secretary of public affairs for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

A day after the shooting, as Abbott prepared for a news conference to be broadcast live nationally, a Uvalde police lieutenant planned to provide an account of the shooting to the governor and other federal, state and local officials before falling ill. Escalon stepped in during the closed-door meeting and then similarly relayed the account of police bravery to local and state leaders and the FBI, the Statesman reported in June.

Afterward, the group of mostly elected leaders took the stage at Uvalde High School for their first major news conference on the shooting. Abbott explained that the gunman had shot his grandmother before driving her pickup near the campus. Then Abbott told the public, “It is a fact that because of their quick response, getting on the scene, being able to respond to the gunman and eliminate the gunman, they were able to save lives.”

During the same news conference, DPS Director Steve McCraw presented a timeline of the police response and said that as the gunman approached the school, “there was a brave consolidated independent school district resource officer who approached him, engaged him, and at the time gunfire was not exchanged.”

No officer confronted the gunman before he entered Robb Elementary and shot his way into the classroom, officers later acknowledged and the 77-minute video obtained by the Statesman shows.

“They did contain him in the classroom, and they put the tactical stack together in a very orderly way and breached,” McCraw said.

But later that day, investigators who weren’t on the scene began realizingthe narrative of heroism didn’t match reality as more social media videos emerged showing frantic parents begging officers to act during the shooting and as Texas Rangers began reviewing the Robb Elementary hallway footage.

McCraw said high-ranking staff alerted him — “wait a minute” — and he began reviewing the evidence.

“It was shock,” he said. “How could you not be shocked. It was unbelievable.”

The next morning, May 26, the Statesman reported that the Rangers were expanding their investigation to include the law enforcement response. 

In an attempt to begin correcting the record, DPS leadersdecided that Escalon should address the mounting questions about the police performance. At a news conference on the street in front of Robb Elementary with hundreds of reporters two days after the shooting, new statements only served to deepen the confusion.

“There is some information, as of Tuesday, I want to clear up, that we want to clear up, that has been pushed out,” Escalon said. “There’s a lot going on. It is a complex situation.”

Reporters began hammering Escalon with questions about the response as parents of the victims, bystanders and Robb teachers stood by.

“Should they have gone in faster?” one asked.

“That’s a difficult question,” Escalon responded. “Our job is to report the facts, and later we can answer those questions. I don’t have enough information to answer that question just yet.”

By the next morning, three days after the massacre, McCraw took to the same podium and began to reveal a wrenching timeline in which teachers and students called 911 multiple times asking for help and begging for officers to enter the classrooms. McCraw said for the first time that the on-scene commander, school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, treated what happened as a barricaded subject situation instead of an active shooter — a flawed judgment call that delayed classroom entry.

McCraw, who provided a timeline based on the the 77-minute video of law enforcement’s failure to immediately act, made no mention that dozens of heavily armed officers crowded into the hallway at Robb Elementary without breaching the classroom and killing the gunman.

“There were plenty of officers to do what needed to be done. Of course, it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision,” he said.

Behind the scenes, a handful of law enforcement investigators involved in the case in Uvalde were furious, according to interviews with the Statesman. Some felt as though McCraw had scapegoated their officers by excluding that 91 DPS responders at Robb also failed to quickly end the attack. Those familiar with their concerns spoke on background to the Statesman because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.

The next week, Abbott’s office, in an attempt to rebuild trust and cooperation, set up a meeting with DPS and Uvalde leaders, including McLaughlin, County Judge Bill Mitchell and District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee. Several officials in the meeting declined to say who provided the one-page “narrative” document that lacked the full truth of what happened.

Over the next several weeks, in repeated public statements, including to a state Senate investigative committee, McCraw and others continued to largely focus blame on Uvalde officials, including Arredondo. McCraw told the Senate panel in a June 21 Capitol hearing that the overall police response was an “abject failure.”

One month later, as the pressure mounted over police response and worried parents prepared for their children to return to school, McCraw clarified that DPS officers are expected to engage any future school shooters and “will be authorized to overcome any delay to neutralizing an attacker.”

On July 12, the Statesman published the entire security video and body camera footage that showed how the gunman entered the school unchallenged, shot his way into the classroom and opened fire, and how responding officers followed by scores of heavily armed backup officers stood in the hallway but waited 77 minutes before breaching the classroom.

The video, published with news partner KVUE-TV, impeached the storyline that police responded quickly and heroically and put themselves between the shooter and schoolchildren.

On Sept. 6, DPS officials said five officers who responded to the school shooting were referred to the agency’s inspector general for possible disciplinary action as a result of the delay in confronting the gunman. Two of the five were suspended with pay.

On the day the Uvalde school district fired Arredondo in August, his attorney released a 17-page statement, still praising his performance.

“Chief Arredondo was brave, led other officers in saving lives, and took all reasonable actions to prevent further injuries or loss of life,” attorney George Hyde said. Arredondo “never retreated, he stayed in the hallway, fully engaged in working the problem of getting the door open and evacuating those accessible out of harm’s way.”

The full truth of how police responded the day of the shooting still is not known. The Statesman is part of a coalition of media outlets suing the DPS to require that the agency release records such as 911 calls, officer statements and video footage. No date has been set for a hearing.

As that process unfolds, Cedric Alexander, who worked in high-ranking law enforcement posts in Rochester, N.Y., and DeKalb County, Ga., and served as president of the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Executives and was on President Barack Obama’s task force on 21st century policing, said erroneous and incomplete information tarnishes public trust in policing.

“When you start pronouncing that heroism takes place and then millions of people hear children being killed behind a door and dozens of officers doing nothing, how do you expect the American people not to feel the way that they do?” said Alexander, who was recently appointed Minneapolis’ first community safety commissioner.

“Lesson learned here, before we start high-fiving and patting ourselves on the back, we need to understand what the facts are,” he said.

Tina Quintanilla-Taylor, a mother of two whose daughter attended Robb Elementary, said she is not sure if her family will ever trust police again. 

Her son used to love officers, she said, but now cowers when he sees them. She said she will never understand the initial reports of law enforcement bravery, especially knowing that they stood in the hall for more than an hour.

“For anyone who was out there that day, it is a slap in the face,” she said, referring to the hero narrative. “They did not fulfill their promise to serve and protect.”

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