Uvalde mayor calls Austin Statesman reporters ‘chicken’ for publishing video of delayed officer response at Robb Elementary

On Tuesday the Austin American-Statesman published video showing key moments in law enforcement’s delayed response to the brutal school shooting that took the lives of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24. 

The video showed officers with ballistic shields and long guns waiting inside the school as the shooter continued to fire rounds in the classroom where his victims were located. A team led by Border Patrol agents is seen breaching the door and can be heard engaging 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos an hour and 14 minutes after officers first arrived on the scene.

The footage, edited down to a four-minute clip with time stamps added by the Statesman, sparked immediate national backlash from citizens upset with the inaction of nearby heavily-armed officers even as shots were fired inside the classroom. At a Tuesday night city council meeting, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin responded to the publication of the footage with angry words for Statesman reporters, calling them “chicken” for publicly disseminating the video.

“I want to go on the record: The way that video was released today is one of the most chicken things I’ve ever seen,” McLaughlin said.

“Yes, I’ve wanted the video released, but all these news agencies knew that we were working with it with the [Texas] House committee, that we were going to have a meeting Sunday to give a report to the family members,” McLaughlin said. 

McLaughlin added that the House Committee was planning on showing family members of the victims a version of the video on Sunday that didn’t include segments seen in the Statesman’s video, specifically footage showing Ramos entering the school and firing toward the classroom. The Statesman’s video includes this portion but is edited to remove the screams of children as they were shot inside the classroom.

“All I’ve seen is the first little segment of four minutes, there’s no reason for the families to have to see that,” McLaughlin said. “They didn’t need to see the gunman coming and hear the gunshots…that was the most chicken way to put this video out today.”

Council member Ernest W. “Chip” King III added to McLaughlin’s comments, calling Statesman reporters “chickensh-t.” 

“The mayor said ‘chicken,’ it was chickensh-t,” King said. “To release that video the way you did it. That part of the video was not supposed to be in what they’re doing on Sunday. That was not supposed to be there…they did that for ratings and for money.”

A voice from off-camera interjects, asking the councilman if he also thinks the police officers were cowardly in their response.

“What about the cops? Are they chickens–t?” the voice asks, eliciting murmurs of approval from the crowd.

“We’re going to handle that,” King answers. 

“Y’all are attacking the media, you should be attacking those cops that did nothing,” the off-camera voice shouts. 

Texas leaders, some of which had previously called for the release of officer and school surveillance video from the day of shooting, slammed the Statesman for releasing video of the incident.

“Officials told families to prepare themselves to view this horrific footage on Sunday. Now, somebody leaked it,” tweeted Democratic Texas state Senator Roland Gutierrez, who filed a lawsuit in June against the Texas Department of Safety for not releasing records related to the police response at Robb Elementary. “This is appalling.” 

“I am deeply disappointed this video was released before all the families who were impacted that day and the community of Uvalde had the opportunity to view it as part of Chairman Dustin Burrows’ plan,” said Texas DPS Director Steven McCraw in a statement Tuesday. “Those most affected should been among the first to see it.”

“As I stated during my testimony before the Senate Special Committee to Protect All Texans, this video provides horrifying evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary on May 24 was an abject failure,” McCraw stated. 

At Tuesday’s meeting the council accepted the resignation of Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo, whose leadership as incident commander on the scene has been widely criticized.