As law enforcement officers hung back outside Khloie Torres’ fourth-grade classroom in Uvalde, Texas, she begged for help in a series of 911 calls, whispering into the phone that there were “a lot” of bodies and telling the operator: “Please, I don’t want to die. My teacher is dead. Oh, my God.” At one point, the dispatcher asks Khloie if there are many people in the room with the 10-year-old, who ultimately survived. “No, it’s just me and a couple of friends. A lot of people are,” she says, pausing briefly, “gone.” Calls from Khloie and others, along with body camera footage and surveillance videos from the May 24, 2022, shooting at Robb Elementary School, were included in a massive collection of audio and video recordings released by Uvalde city officials on Saturday after a prolonged legal fight, the Associated Press reports. The Associated Press and other news organizations brought a lawsuit after the officials initially refused to publicly release the information.
The massacre, which left 19 students and two teachers dead, was one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history. Jesse Rizo, whose 9-year-old niece Jacklyn Cazares was killed in the shooting, said the release of information Saturday reignited festering anger because it shows “the waiting and waiting and waiting” of law enforcement. The police response included nearly 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 91 state police officials, as well as school and city police. While terrified students and teachers called 911 from inside classrooms, dozens of officers stood in the hallway trying to figure out what to do. Desperate parents who had gathered outside the building pleaded with them to go in. “Perhaps if they were to have breached earlier, they would have saved some lives, including my niece’s,” Rizo said.
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