Former Uvalde schools police Chief Pete Arredondo asked a state district court on Friday to quash ten felony charges of child endangerment for his response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting.

Arredondo is one of two law enforcement officers who face criminal charges for their response to Texas’ deadliest school shooting, which left nineteen children and two teachers dead on May 22, 2022. An indictment handed down in June by a Uvalde County grand jury called Arredondo the incident commander and accused him of to ten children by delaying law enforcement’s response to the active shooter and not responding as trained.

In their motion to toss out the indictment, Arredondo’s lawyers say school districts and their employees don’t have a duty to protect students from third-party threats. The lawyers also point out that the children were already in danger when Arredondo responded.

“The indictment does not allege that Mr. Arredondo engaged in any conduct that placed a child in imminent danger of death, bodily injury, or physical or mental impairment,” the filing states. “To the contrary, the language in the indictment itself makes clear that when Mr. Arredondo responded as part of his official duties, an active shooter incident was already in progress.”

Arredondo that he did not think he was the incident commander and that he did not give any orders. Nearly 400 local, state and federal law enforcement officers descended upon the school but failed to act decisively, instead waiting for more than an hour to confront the gunman.

Border Patrol agents ultimately decided to breach the classroom and killed the shooter.

Since the school shooting, families of Uvalde victims have called on local and state elected officials to hold officers accountable for their failures in leadership. Many said they were disappointed that the grand jury indicted only two officers.

In addition to Arredondo, former district officer Adrian Gonzales was indicted on 29 counts of child endangerment. Gonzales violating school district policy or state law. Both officers were released from Uvalde County Jail on bond.

Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Relatives of 17 children killed and two kids injured in Texas’ deadliest school shooting are suing Texas Department of Public Safety officers who were among hundreds of law enforcement that the gunman at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary, lawyers announced last week.

“Nearly 100 officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety have yet to face a shred of accountability for cowering in fear while my daughter and nephew bled to death in their classroom,” Veronica Luevanos, whose daughter Jailah and nephew Jayce were killed, said in a statement.

The legal action against 92 DPS officers came days before the two-year anniversary of the shooting in which an to kill 19 students and two teachers in two adjoining fourth-grade classrooms.

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Relatives of most of those students killed and two who were injured also announced last week that they are suing Mandy Gutierrez, who was the principal at Robb at the time, and Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, who was the school district police chief, for their “inaction” that day.

The families’ attorney also announced that the city of Uvalde will pay them $2 million to avoid a lawsuit. Additionally, the city will provide enhanced training for current and future police officers, designate May 24 as an annual day of remembrance and work with victims’ families to design a permanent memorial at the city plaza, among other things.

A DPS spokesperson declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

During a press conference in Uvalde, an attorney for the families, Josh Koskoff, said the state’s failure to prevent the deaths began long before the shooting occurred. He said Texas failed to provide small communities like Uvalde with enough resources to train their officers.

“You think the city of Uvalde has enough money, or training, or resources? You think they can hire the best of the best?” Koskoff said. “As far as the state of Texas is concerned, it sounds like their position is: You’re on your own.”

Koskoff also hinted that the families could also sue state and federal agencies, but did not name which ones. He also said the families are negotiating an agreement with the county, which would also avoid a lawsuit.

Javier Cazares, the father of one of the victims, Jacklyn Cazares, said it had been an “unbearable two years” since the massacre that took his daughter.

“There was an obvious system failure out there on May 24. The whole world saw that,” Cazares said. “The time has come to do the right thing.”

The family’s lawsuit will likely need to overcome a judicial doctrine called qualified immunity, which shields government officials, including law enforcement officers, from liability in lawsuits. Overcoming that immunity will require establishing that the officers violated a constitutional right.

“We think that this situation where kids, after all, are required to lock down in their classrooms, their freedom is constrained,” Koskoff said. “In this situation we feel like qualified immunity is not applicable.”

State Sen. , a Democrat who represents Uvalde in the Legislature, filed a bill last year that sought to end qualified immunity. Like filed in response to the massacre, that bill failed to pass.

Koskoff, who has also represented the families of children killed in the , said city officials had also failed to hold their officers accountable but praised the city for working with the families to implement changes aimed at preventing another tragedy like the 2022 shooting.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers from scores of local, state and federal agencies have been heavily criticized for waiting more than an hour to confront the gunman, which conflicted with training that instructs them to confront a shooter if there is reason to believe someone is hurt. The U.S. Justice Department’s concluded that the delay likely caused some deaths and that failures in leadership and training contributed to law enforcement’s ineffective response.

Koskoff noted that law enforcement outnumbered the gunman 376 to 1.

“On paper, it should have been no contest. So what happened?” Koskoff said. “Maybe it just turns out that if a kid has a military weapon, the military weapon — the AR-15 — and you get access to it easily, maybe it’s not that simple to stop a kid like that. Of course, they didn’t give themselves a chance, these 376 officers.”

In the settlement with the city of Uvalde that families’ lawyers announced May 22, local officials will implement a new “fitness for duty” standard for Uvalde police officers, to be developed in coordination with the Justice Department and provide enhanced training for current and future police officers.

“For two long years, we have languished in pain and without any accountability from the law enforcement agencies and officers who allowed our families to be destroyed that day,” Luevanos said. “This settlement reflects a first good faith effort, particularly by the City of Uvalde, to begin rebuilding trust in the systems that failed to protect us.”

In a written statement, city officials called the 2022 shooting the “community’s greatest tragedy.”

“We will forever be grateful to the victims’ families for working with us over the past year to cultivate an environment of community-wide healing that honors the lives and memories of those we tragically lost,” city officials said.

An investigation by a Texas House committee found “systemic failures and egregious poor decision making” by nearly everyone involved in the response.

That panel’s 77-page report revealed that a total of 376 law enforcement officers descended upon the school in an uncoordinated manner, disregarding their own active shooter training.

The majority of the responders were federal and state law enforcement –– 149 U.S. Border Patrol and 91 state police –– whose responsibilities include responding to “mass attacks in public places.” The other responders included 25 Uvalde police officers, 16 sheriff’s deputies, and five police officers with the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District as well as neighboring county law enforcement, U.S. marshals and federal Drug Enforcement Administration officers.

The myriad of law enforcement mistakes stemmed from an absence of leadership and effective communications, according to the House report. DPS who responded to the shooting.

A trove of recorded investigative interviews and body camera footage obtained by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and FRONTLINE showed that officers failed to set up a clear command structure and spread incorrect information that caused them to treat the shooter as a barricaded suspect and not an active threat — even as children and teachers inside the classrooms called 911 pleading for help. No single officer engaged the shooter for more than an hour despite training that says they should do so as quickly as possible if anyone is hurt.

Following intense criticism of their response, several law enforcement officers resigned or were fired in the months following the shooting. Arredondo, the school district police chief at the time, was fired in August 2022.

About 72% of the state and local officials who arrived at Robb Elementary before the gunman was killed received some form of active shooter training throughout their law enforcement careers. But of those who received training, most had taken it only once. After the shooting, Texas mandated that officers receive 16 hours of active shooter training every two years.

A Uvalde County grand jury is currently considering potential criminal charges against responding officers. The county’s prosecutor declined to comment this week on the status of those proceedings.

DPS is fighting the release of records from its investigation into the shooting. In the aftermath of the massacre, agency leaders that cast local law enforcement as incompetent.

Koskoff criticized DPS for deflecting blame away from state police.

“As if they didn’t know how to shoot somebody?” he said.

Pooja Salhotra contributed to this story.

This article originally appeared in at . The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

A scathing federal report on the Uvalde mass shooting released Thursday highlighted the miscommunication and lack of action between the hundreds of officers who showed up to Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022.

The Justice Department’s also came with plenty of recommendations to improve schools safety and active shooter protocols in the state. Texas lawmakers last year passed to address many of those issues, but failed to include more mental health screenings as recommended by the report. School districts believe HB 3 was a step in the right direction, but have complained the state funding allocated to pay for the changes isn’t enough to cover the expenses they’ll have to incur. There were efforts during to add more funding, but the fight over school vouchers sank them.

The report’s recommendations include having active shooter plans for every school, regular meetings between local law enforcement and local government officials to conduct security exercises, replacing or upgrading all faulty school doors and locks, mental health screenings for victims and better communication between law enforcement, school officials and the community.

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“Had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in an active shooter situation and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland during a news conference on Thursday.

Gov. , who praised the police response immediately after the shooting and later said he was misled about how it transpired, released a statement Thursday thanking the Justice Department for its report. He said the state has already adopted some of the measures it recommended and would review others.

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed during the Robb Elementary . The gunman was able to enter the school through a series of unlocked doors.

When officers arrived, they retreated after coming under fire and waited for backup. The decision was counter to the active shooter doctrine developed after the 1999 Columbine High School mass shooting in Colorado, which dictates that officers must immediately confront the shooters.

Leadership was also amiss among the plethora of law enforcement officers who responded to the shooting, with no one acting as the “incident commander.” Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district’s former police chief, has said he didn’t believe he was in charge, even though the district’s active-shooter plan states he was.

The report authors also expressed concern with an active-shooter training course that Uvalde school district police officers received from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement just months before the massacre, which states that an “active shooter event can easily morph into a hostage crisis and vice versa.” The Justice Department said that an active shooter event very rarely ceases to be a hostage situation and officers should always seek to eliminate the threat as soon as possible.

Texas is already trying to implement many of the Justice Department’s recommendations. Under HB 3, the state created a safety and security department within the Texas Education Agency and gave it the authority to compel school districts to establish and follow robust safety protocols. Those that fail to meet the agency’s standards could be put under the state’s supervision.

Since the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting, the state has required school districts to submit those plans — which must include active-shooter strategies — for the review of the Texas School Safety Center, a think tank at Texas State University created by lawmakers in 2001.

A three-year audit in 2020 found that out of the 1,022 school districts in the state, just 200 districts had active-shooter policies as part of their safety plans. The audit revealed 626 districts did not have active-shooter policies; 196 had active-shooter policies but were deemed insufficient. Only 67 school districts had viable emergency operations plans overall, the report found.

HB3 also tasks the state with setting up teams to conduct security audits at every school district at least once a year. Districts are also required to have an armed person on campus.

In addition, the law requires the TEA to develop standards for notifying parents of “violent activity” on campus and set up school safety review teams to conduct vulnerability assessments of all the school campuses once a year.

In counties with fewer than 350,000 people, the law requires the sheriff to hold semi-annual meetings to discuss school safety and law enforcement response to “violent incidents.” The law states response plans must include a clear chain of command and that all radios must be working.

Each school district is also required to give the Texas Department of Public Safety and other law enforcement agencies in their area a walkthrough and a map of each campus in an effort to avoid confusion when responding to an incident.

To tackle mental health, school employees who regularly interact with children will need to complete an “evidence-based mental health first-aid training program.” The TEA would reimburse the employee for the time and money spent on the training.

The law gave each school district $15,000 per campus and $10 per student to pay for safety upgrades. Lawmakers also gave the TEA $1.1 billion to to administer school safety grants among the state’s school districts.

Many school officials State Sen. , a San Antonio Democrat who represents Uvalde, voted against HB 3 last year because of the funding concerns.

“It is sick and twisted that we have the largest budget surplus in Texas history and we aren’t doing a damn thing to keep our kids safe,” he said during a Senate debate on the bill referring to last year’s $32.7 billion budget surplus. “We aren’t doing anything to prevent another Uvalde.”

Lawmakers tried to give school districts more money to beef up security on campuses late last year. School districts were close to receiving an additional $1 billion for school safety but the legislation stalled after school voucher legislation failed to pass. Abbott had vowed to veto any new public education funding if it didn’t come in hand with a voucher proposal, his top legislative priority last year.

School officials were already struggling to meet the safety requirements in HB 3, like the mandate to staff every campus with an armed officer. Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde told The Texas Tribune last month that with more than 220 campuses, the district needs $3 million annually to post trained security guards at every school. While the district did receive grants from the state, Elizalde believes they aren’t a reliable source of funding for the future. And if the district doesn’t receive more money to pay for safety improvements, it may have to cut programs and potentially lay off staff.

“That has become our biggest obstacle — how do you, time and time again, continue to make cuts to make sure that we have the safest schools possible?” Elizalde said.

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UVALDE — U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said some victims of the 2022 Uvalde school shooting would have survived if Texas law enforcement officers — who waited more than an hour to confront the gunman — had followed “generally accepted practices.”

Those assertions came Thursday after the U.S. Justice Department into the hundreds of Texas law enforcement officers’ fumbled response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting, finding “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training.”

The long-anticipated 575-page report detailed the many catastrophic errors of the May 24, 2022 response, but concluded the most significant was that officers should have immediately recognized that it was an active shooter situation and confronted the gunman, who was with victims in two adjoining classrooms.

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Garland called the response “a failure that should not have happened” and said he apologized to the relatives of the 21 killed and the 17 injured in the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.

“Their loved ones deserved better,” Garland said.

The report noted that since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, American law enforcement officers have been trained to prioritize stopping the shooter while everything else, including officer safety, is secondary.

“These efforts must be undertaken regardless of the equipment and personnel available,” the report found. “This did not occur during the Robb Elementary shooting response.”

Instead, officers wrongly treated the situation as a barricaded suspect, even as children and teachers . The report noted “multiple stimuli indicating that there was an active threat,” including that an Uvalde school police officer early on told other law enforcement that his wife, a teacher in Room 112, was shot. It took 77 minutes for officers to confront the shooter. died that day and 17 others were injured in one of the country’s worst school shootings.

The report also found failures in leadership, command and coordination, noting that as more officers, including supervisors from other agencies, descended on the school, no one set up an incident command structure or took charge of the scene.

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta condemned the medical response, saying that after police breached the classroom and killed the gunman, dead victims were placed on ambulances and children with bullet wounds were put on school buses.

Gupta also criticized misinformation and conflicting accounts that officials disseminated to Uvalde residents and reporters after the shooting.

Supervisors from the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, the Uvalde Police Department, the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office, and the Texas Department of Public Safety “demonstrated no urgency” in taking control of the incident, which exacerbated the communication problems and overall confusion.

Some failures may have been partly a result of policy and training deficiencies, the report found, noting that the school district police department suggested wrongly in prior training that active shooter situations can transition into hostage or barricaded incidents. DPS lacked an active shooter policy, as did the county sheriff’s office and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the 149 Border Patrol agents who responded.

The report also found that key officers, including Uvalde Police Department Acting Chief Mariano Pargas who arrived within minutes of the shooting, had no active shooter or incident command training.

The vast majority of 380 officers from more than a dozen local, state and federal agencies who responded to the school had never trained together, “contributing to difficulties in coordination and communication.” The report said the “lack of pre-planning hampered even well-prepared agencies from functioning at their best.”

Among its recommendations, the report said that officers should “never” treat an active shooter with access to victims as a barricaded suspect. Law enforcement training academies must ensure active shooter training instructs how officers should distinguish between active threats and barricaded or hostage situations. And officers should be prepared to approach the threat using just the tools they have with them, which is often a standard firearm, the report noted.

The federal review by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services was announced just five days after the shooting. It was led by Orange County Sheriff John Mina, the incident commander during the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando. In that incident, officers waited three hours to take down the shooter who had barricaded himself with victims in a bathroom.

A Justice Department and National Policing Institute review of that Florida law enforcement response was far less critical than the Uvalde report. It found that Florida officers mostly followed best practices, although it stated the law enforcement agencies in Orlando should update their training and policies.

In the Uvalde review, the federal team reviewed more than 14,100 pieces of data and documentation, including policies, training logs, body camera footage, audio recordings, interview transcripts and photographs. The team visited Uvalde nine times, spending 54 days there, and conducted more than 260 interviews with people from more than 30 organizations and agencies, including law enforcement officers, school staff, medical personnel, survivors and victims’ families.

The Uvalde report’s release comes two months after ProPublica, the Texas Tribune and PBS’ Frontline published into the response after gaining access to a trove of investigative materials, including more than 150 interviews with officers and dozens of body cameras. The material showed that the children at Robb Elementary followed active shooter protocols, while many of the officers did not. It detailed how officers treated the situation as a barricaded suspect rather than an active threat even as evidence mounted quickly that children and teachers were injured and with the shooter.

The investigation also analyzed the active shooter training of the local and state police officers who responded prior to the gunman being stopped, finding some had not taken any active shooter training based on their state records. Of those who had, they most commonly only received the training once during their careers and hadn’t taken it in four years or longer.

The Tribune also revealed that to confront the gunman because he had a deadly AR-15 rifle. With the Washington Post, ProPublica and the Tribune found that and that two children and a teacher were still alive when they were rescued more than an hour later, but then died.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at .

This story was written by  and photographed by .

For 24/7 mental health support in English or Spanish, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s at 800-662-4357. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the by calling or texting 988.

UVALDE — At 7 a.m. on a Monday in February, Jessica Treviño, with squinty eyes, goes into her sons’ bedroom and in a low, raspy voice tells them to wake up. Eleven-year-old David James rolls out of bed, but 9-year-old Austin, the youngest of the four Treviño children, doesn’t move from the lower bunk bed.

The siblings get ready for school. David James grabs the car keys and starts the family’s black Ram 1500 truck for his mother.

Austin, who is still in bed covered by a blanket, tells his mother he doesn’t want to go to school.

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“I can’t leave you by yourself,” Jessica, 40, tells him, leaning over his body as their fat bulldog, Chubs, tries to jump on the bed. “You have to go to school.”

Austin doesn’t move. The night before, the sound of police sirens woke him.

“It’s ’cause there were cop sounds last night so he’s kinda scared,” David James tells his mother.

It’s not the first time one of the children won’t go to school because something spooked them. And Jessica knows it won’t be the last.

Three of the four Treviño children were students at Robb Elementary on May 24, 2022, and were on campus for an awards ceremony as an 18-year-old approached the school.

That day, Jessica picked up David James, Austin and her now 12-year-old daughter, Illiaña, from the school about 11:30 a.m.

Jessica later found out that as she was driving off, the shooter had just walked into a classroom, killing two teachers and 19 students — including Illiaña’s best friend, a , who was Illiaña’s defender when other children made fun of her.

A few days after the shooting, Jessica took Illiaña, whom she calls Nana, to Uvalde’s plaza to leave a teddy bear and flowers at a memorial for her friend. Suddenly, Illiaña’s heart began to race and she had trouble breathing. Jessica took her to the local hospital, which transferred her to an intensive care unit in San Antonio. The doctor there told Jessica that Illiaña was suffering cardiac arrest and her body shut down from acute stress. She was released after a week.

“Nana was born with a heart of gold,” Jessica says. “So when it breaks, that’s how she reacted.”

Now, things like the sound of police sirens, people yelling — just about any loud sound — can be triggers for Austin and Illiaña, who have developed post-traumatic stress disorder because of the shooting.

This morning, Jessica convinces Austin to get out of bed but agrees to let him miss school. She goes to the kitchen to get Illiaña’s antidepressant and anti-anxiety medicine from a lunch bag filled with prescription bottles. Then she hands Austin the pink ear protectors he uses to block out noise.

Austin says he puts them on “only when I hear the screams.”

Jessica said Austin’s therapist has told her that the kids may talk about the shooting like they were there in an unconscious attempt to empathize with the children they saw at school every day.

In the aftermath of the school shooting in Uvalde, much of the public’s attention has focused on the families of the children who died at Robb Elementary. Artists from San Antonio painted murals all over downtown memorializing the students and teachers who were killed. A year later, the city’s plaza is still adorned with crosses and photos of those who died.

The shooting has also caused emotional and psychological damage to a generation of Uvalde children, particularly the more than 500 students who attended Robb last spring. For the Treviño family, the shooting has reshaped their lives and influenced their children’s outlook on life. It has forced them to learn coping skills and learn how to be resilient.

Illiaña, David James and Austin barely escaped the horror their fellow students endured — hiding in their classrooms and hearing gunshots and the screams of terrified children. They each lost friends and classmates in the massacre and are dealing with that trauma in their own way.

Illiaña gets panic attacks, and David James and Austin have nightmares. Austin wets the bed at night and has accidents at school.

Illiaña and Austin are in therapy. So is the family’s oldest child, 13-year-old Ameliaña, who was in middle school last year and since the shooting has taken on the responsibility of helping to emotionally support her younger siblings. David James refuses to see a therapist.

Between 2018 and 2019, more than 100,000 American children attended a school where a shooting occurred, according to research co-authored by Maya Rossin-Slater, an associate professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.

“While many students are physically unharmed, studies have consistently found consequences to their mental health, educational, and economic trajectories that last for years, and potentially decades, to come,” .

Most people “don’t think about the parents who had children who survived,” says David, Jessica’s husband. “All the costs that we have to pay for because of the shooting, like therapy and other things.”

Jessica says she gave the state-funded counseling at Uvalde’s new resiliency center a try for Illiaña but didn’t like its practice of rotating staff, which meant her daughter couldn’t see the same counselor at every visit.

Jessica takes a sip from the first of four cups of coffee she will drink today and swallows a tablet for her oral chemotherapy. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in November but opted not to undergo radiation treatment because she fears it would sap the last of her energy.

“I’m doing oral chemotherapy because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to take care of them,” Jessica says, motioning toward her children. “And as you can tell, it’s a job to take care of them.”

David, 42, stays in bed. He is paralyzed from the waist down, so it’s hard for him to help with the children in the mornings.

By 7:45 a.m., Jessica gets the four children in the truck and drops them off at their new schools: Illiaña, David James and Austin attend Sacred Heart, the local private Catholic school, while Ameliaña — an angsty teenager who’s easily annoyed by her mother’s advice — goes to Uvalde Classical Academy, a private high school. The Treviños hoped their kids would be safer at private schools and that maybe Illiaña wouldn’t face bullies.

After drop-offs, Jessica returns home with Austin, where she’ll spend the day with him until it’s time to pick them up again. She quit her job cleaning vacation cabins shortly after the shooting so she could be around her children as much as possible. Now they survive on David’s disability checks and Jessica’s dwindling savings.

David says he sometimes feels helpless, knowing that he doesn’t have the tools to help his children cope with the trauma the shooting has caused.

“It’s hard for me because I’m the type of man that if there’s anything in the way of my family’s happiness, I would move it out of the way,” he says. “But after [the shooting], there’s nothing to move out of the way, there’s nothing physically that I can do. It’s all mental. So that’s what makes it really hard for me.

“It’s just really hard because I know how my children were before the shooting.”

February 21

On a Tuesday evening, Jessica takes Illiaña and Ameliaña to a park near the edge of town for softball practice. The Treviños got all of the kids into basketball or softball after the shooting to help them stay busy. As her daughters join the other girls on the team, Jessica stands nearby, holding a can of Monster Energy drink. It helps offset the chemo pills, which make her lethargic.

A coach bats fly balls to the girls. Jessica looks on and laughs when she sees Illiaña, who is twirling and dancing in place on the field, entertaining herself. Jessica says Illiaña — a sassy preteen who enjoys drawing, reading Japanese comics and listening to rock music — joined the softball team mostly to spend time with her older sister, who takes the sport more seriously and dreams of playing on the Baylor University team.

Jessica treasures moments like this, when they can all forget what happened. But it instantly makes her feel guilty for enjoying her children. So many parents in Uvalde lost their children last year.

“It breaks my heart that I have mine and they don’t,” Jessica says. “The guilt eats me up.

“I just feel so blessed to still have them with me.”

In the first weeks after the shooting, Jessica gave media interviews explaining that while her children weren’t physically harmed, the tragedy affected their entire family’s mental health. She opened a GoFundMe account to help with their medical and therapy costs.

Most people were supportive, she said, but some strangers sent ugly messages, telling Jessica that her children don’t deserve help because they shouldn’t be considered survivors.

One person wrote: “Why is Illiaña getting help if she’s not one of the survivors?”

Later in the evening, Jessica gets a call from Ameliaña’s best friend’s mother, who tells Jessica that her daughter has troubling screenshots of a private chat group. A teenager in the group told the other participants that he hated Ameliaña and threatened to hurt Ameliaña’s father.

This worries Jessica enough that she goes to the police station to file a report, worried the boy may follow through on his threats.

Before May 24, Jessica says, she would have dismissed the incident.

“Before, I’d be like, ‘DĂ©jalo,’” — let it go — “‘they’re just kids talking shit,’” she says. “But now you can’t second-guess yourself. Now that we know what could happen, now that we know kids have access to guns.”

February 23

After dropping the kids off at school on Thursday, Jessica drives an hour and a half to San Antonio for a follow-up appointment with her cancer doctor. The MRI results show she has another nickel-sized tumor, but the other tumors have shrunk. The doctor says she can continue with oral chemotherapy but eventually she will have to go through radiation.

Jessica plans to push that off for as long as she can.

“My biggest priority right now is to keep Nana safe at school and deal with the bullying,” Jessica says. “I usually put what the kids need first before anything else.”

The cancer isn’t her only worry: Before her diagnosis in November, Jessica developed desmoid tumors in her left leg — they aren’t cancerous, but they cause her constant discomfort.

“I’m in a lot of pain,” she says, rubbing her thigh as she picks up the boys’ clothes from the living room floor after returning from San Antonio. “Usually, it’s at night that I deal with a lot of pain, but I think it’s because it’s been hectic lately.”

Doctors have told her that surgery is an option, but there’s a risk the tumors will grow back. The pain gets so bad that Jessica says she’s thought about amputating her legs.

“My doctor said, ‘I’m game if you’re game.’ But we think about the kids a lot,” Jessica says, standing over a pile of laundry before she goes back into the kitchen to season chicken for dinner.

* * *

Having both parents in wheelchairs isn’t an option. David does what he can to help Jessica, but in his mind it’s not enough.

“I’ve always worked, that’s how I was built,” he said on a recent afternoon as he watered his lawn outside of their four-bedroom home on a quiet street shaded by large trees. “Sometimes I want to go to work but I can’t.”

As a boy, he earned money collecting lost golf balls at the local country club. As an adult, he worked in the oil fields, operated heavy machinery and then became a truck driver. In November 2019, he was driving an 18-wheeler on a rainy day and lost control. The rig rolled and threw him out of the cab. He survived but was paralyzed from the waist down.

Still, he helps around the house. He cooks, he plays basketball with the boys, he coaches Austin’s football team and he drives the kids to practice — he plays softball in a wheelchair league and connects with his children through sports. At his daughters’ softball games, he’s among the loudest parents.

Jessica and David met at a dance in 2008, two years after she had moved to Uvalde from her hometown of Houston. They started dating and nearly two years later Jessica was pregnant with Ameliaña. They got married in July 2011.

Since the shooting, Jessica says she wants to move out of Uvalde. She wants her children to grow up somewhere far from reminders of the shooting.

“I want my kids to get better, but how can I do that if they’re in the same spot?” she says.

David says he doesn’t want to move — he was born here and loves Uvalde too much. He says he wants his children to grow up with the same positive experiences he had.

Despite what happened at Robb, David still feels like Uvalde is a safe town — as safe as anywhere else anyway. He can go to El Herradero de Jalisco, a town watering hole, for Mexican food and see the same people there every time.

“I don’t have to worry about who’s around me and my kids,” he says.

March 21

It’s a sunny afternoon in March, and Austin is in the backyard hitting softballs off a tee into a net. He says he stayed home from school this morning because he had a hard time falling asleep the night before and woke up with a fever. Jessica gave him the benefit of the doubt and let him stay home.

Nearly every day since the shooting, Jessica has to convince Austin or Illiaña to go to school, and they miss school at least once a week. Sometimes Jessica gets a call to pick them up before the school day is done because Illiaña has a panic attack or Austin’s anxiety gets too intense.

Austin admits that he wasn’t really sick this morning: “I had a bad thought last night that I was going to be in a mental hospital,” he says, picking up a softball and setting it on the tee. He spends the next half hour methodically hitting balls, working on his swing.

“One more for the fans,” he says, pretending he’s in a real game. He swings but barely chips the ball, which dribbles off the tee.

“The fans deserve better,” he says, grabbing the ball. He swings again, this time hitting the ball squarely. It soars in the air before hitting a tree in the backyard.

“Yeah!” Austin yells, dropping the bat and running inside the house.

Illiaña emerges to take her own batting practice. Jessica wanders out to the backyard to watch as her daughter gathers the neon-colored softballs, puts them in a bucket and places one on top of the tee. One by one, she hits the balls into the net.

A few hours earlier, Jessica had rushed to Sacred Heart with hydroxyzine, used to treat anxiety, after the school called to tell her Illiaña was biting her fingertips and hyperventilating. Jessica decided to bring her daughter home. After the shooting, a doctor diagnosed Illiaña with post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder and Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disorder.

Jessica watches as Illiaña practices, wondering why her daughter continues having panic attacks and whether they’re going to increase as May 24 approaches.

“I don’t know if it’s the anniversary coming,” Jessica says.

She’s noticed that on the 24th of any month, Illiaña and Austin get more anxious and Illiaña’s panic attacks are more frequent. And just a mention of Illiaña’s best friend can trigger a panic attack.

Before the shooting, Illiaña was targeted for constant bullying by her classmates. Her friend was always there to confront the bullies. Now she’s gone, and Illiaña is dealing with a new set of bullies at her new school.

“Nana gets teased a lot about her height and weight,” Jessica says later as she fries corn tortillas in oil on the stove while Ameliaña does homework at the kitchen table. “I have to keep reassuring her there’s nothing wrong with her, that it’s OK to be different.

“It hurts me to see her crying because she doesn’t feel like she’s good enough to be someone’s friend,” Jessica adds. “And it’s just me to reassure them.”

March 22

Most days are unpredictable in the Treviño house. Jessica and David try to maintain a routine for their children, but anxiety and panic attacks force them to improvise.

At about 11:30 a.m. on a Wednesday, Jessica packs sandwiches in a red lunch bag with Ameliaña’s name on it, then drops the bag off at school and returns home to help her husband get dressed and in his wheelchair.

Half an hour later, a staffer at Sacred Heart leaves Jessica a voicemail, asking if she wants to bring Illiaña’s medication or pick her up — she’s having another panic attack. Jessica rushes to the school.

“This is always the worst part,” Jessica says on the way to the school. “I don’t know what I’m walking into, like does she just not feel well, or is she having a panic attack?”

Jessica goes into the school and emerges a few minutes later holding the 12-year-old’s hand. They get into the car and Illiaña says her stomach and lower back were hurting.

“Something was going through my head,” she tells Jessica.

“What did your counselor say you do when that happens?” Jessica says. “To think of something else and breathe.”

“But I couldn’t,” Illiaña says.

“What did you dream about last night?” Jessica asks Illiaña.

“About being at Robb and everyone was there and the kids screaming and yelling.”

When they arrive home, David is in front of the house, smoking a cigarette.

“Are you all right?” he asks Illiaña.

“My back was hurting,” she tells him.

Inside the house, Jessica gives Illiaña a pill, which she swallows with a drink of water.

* * *

An hour after Illiaña gets home, Jessica receives another message from Sacred Heart, asking her to bring a set of clean clothes for Austin, who had an accident at school. She grabs a pair of red shorts, a T-shirt and Huggies wet wipes.

“It’s one of those days, David,” she says.

“Tell me about it,” he says.

On the drive, Jessica says she’s going to take Austin home.

“As a parent, you’re never ready for stuff like this. We tackle it because we’re moms but deep down it tears you up inside,” she says.

She says she and David have tried to understand what their 9-year-old is going through. They have repeatedly asked him what’s wrong.

“When it first happened, Austin told me, ‘That guy got me all screwed up in the head,’” Jessica says, referring to the shooter.

“ ‘You can’t let him win,’ I told him,” Jessica says.

She goes into the school again and comes back out with Austin. On the way home, they stop at a convenience store, where she buys him some chicken tenders and a bottle of Coke. When they arrive home, Austin showers and emerges in clean clothes.

He grabs his Coke and goes into the backyard, where he lines up the bottle cap on the edge of a handrail and opens the bottle with a quick smack of his hand. The Coke fizzes out and he immediately begins to drink it before it spills.

He says last night he heard loud bangs outside his home and the noise kept him up and made him anxious. In class, he kept thinking about what those sounds could be. He says he decided not to tell his teacher what was going through his mind that caused him to have an accident.

Chubs, Austin’s brown and white bulldog, starts reaching for Austin’s food. The boy wraps his arms around the dog.

“He protects me from dangerous people,” Austin says.

* * *

After Jessica picks up Ameliaña and David James from school, she tells the girls to get ready because it’s picture day for the softball team.

Illiaña sits in her bedroom and begins to cry. Jessica goes into her room, strokes her hair and asks her what’s wrong. She tells her mom she doesn’t want to take pictures.

Jessica asks her why.

“They’re going to make fun of me,” Illiaña says.

Austin goes inside the bedroom and asks his sister what’s wrong. Illiaña, irritated, yells: “Get out of my room, close the door.”

Jessica leaves Illiaña’s room and begins to curl Ameliaña’s hair as the teenager sits on a chair in a living room, watching a video on her cellphone.

“It just hurts to see her like that,” Jessica says, passing a curling iron through Ameliaña’s hair. “She is just having a shitty day all around.”

When Illiaña finally emerges from her room and sees her sister ready for pictures, she decides to go after all.

March 24

Like most Fridays, David is grilling dinner for the family. The house is full of people: Their neighbors are here along with two of David’s cousins, Oscar Treviño and Ida Velasquez, who brings her 8-year-old daughter to play with the Treviño children.

The smell of boiling beans fills the kitchen. Outside, smoke pours from the grill and Mexican corridos play on a Bluetooth speaker as Austin and David James play basketball in the street, teaching Velasquez’s daughter how to shoot.

Illiaña stays in her room and begins to cry. Jessica grabs a bottle of pills and rushes into her daughter’s bedroom along with Velasquez.

“You’re OK,” they tell her.

“No, I’m not,” Illiaña snaps back.

Jessica calls for Ameliaña, who tries to get her younger sister to start a breathing exercise.

“I can’t,” Illiaña says.

Velasquez tries to rub Illiaña’s back to console her, but Illiaña doesn’t want to be touched.

“Let go! Let go! Let go!” Illiaña screams. “Stop touching me.”

Jessica tries to convince Illiaña again to do a breathing exercise. Illiaña buries her face into a plush bear and muffles, “I’m sorry.”

Illiaña then starts to bite her fingertips. Ameliaña rushes out of the room to get Steve, her favorite kitten from the litter that the family cat gave birth to recently. Ameliaña passes the kitten to Illiaña and after about 15 minutes, Illiaña calms down.

Everyone leaves the room. Illiaña stays in bed, caressing Steve.

In the kitchen, Velasquez wants to cry, too. It hurts her to see her niece struggling. Jessica tells her to hold it together. If Illiaña hears or sees her crying, she may break down again.

“You have to be mentally strong to go through this, because look what time it is,” Jessica tells Velasquez. “It’s not like you can take the kids anywhere right now for help.”

After dinner, Illiaña finally emerges from the house, walks to her aunt and hugs her without saying a word.

“You OK, mija?” Velasquez asks her. Illiaña nods her head.

It’s past midnight before the house is finally quiet again. Jessica walks to the back porch and lights up a Marlboro, staring off into the night. She leans against the porch railing, arms crossed.

“I come out here to think: ‘What can I do better the next day?’” she says, then stubs out the cigarette and flicks the butt into the yard.

March 25

The next day is Saturday, and like most weekends, the Treviños try to spend time away from the house as a family.

They pile into the pickup and drive to Del Rio, pulling up to a house where a group of men dressed in boots, denim jeans and black leather vests with the Bad Company motorcycle club logo are waiting with their Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

The bikers greet the Treviño children warmly.

The motorcycle group is made up of military veterans who routinely participate in public events to help raise awareness about mental health issues. Last summer, shortly after the shooting, the club came to Uvalde to take part in a community event for children affected by the shooting and met the Treviño children.

As part of the event, Austin also got to smash a pie in club member Albert Treviño’s face. Since then, Albert — who served four years in the Army, including a tour in Afghanistan, and was diagnosed with PTSD in 2016 — has stayed in touch with Austin and his family. Albert, 33, said he and Austin got along right away because of the boy’s charismatic personality.

He said he appreciates the Treviños doing everything they can to provide a support system for their children, even with their limited resources. He said his brother, who did two tours in Afghanistan with the Army, took his own life after struggling with PTSD, so Albert wants to give the Treviño children another adult to turn to for help.

“Growing up in a Latino family, mental health is kind of like a joke,” he said. “They say stuff like, ‘No, pobrecito, esta menso’” — No, poor him, he’s just dumb.

The bikers help Illiaña, David James and Austin put on helmets. The children sit behind the men, who rev the Harleys’ engines before they take off on rides around the city.

Alexander “Tripp” Arneson, a club member, said that veterans diagnosed with PTSD use motorcycle riding as a form of therapy.

“Riding the bike, you feel the cold wind hit your arms and just feel the speed of the bike,” he says. The club, he adds, wants to help the children create happy memories and have something positive to think about when they’re feeling anxious.

“They shouldn’t go through with what they experienced,” he says. “So whenever they’re feeling bad, this helps them remind them that there are people who care for them.”

When the rides are done, the family decides to go to Blue Hole Park, a popular local swimming spot.

The children excitedly run to a bridge over a broad stretch of San Felipe Creek and jump into the water.

David waits in the truck, out of the sun, while Jessica sits in a lawn chair nearby, wearing a hat and sunglasses, and watches her kids frolicking in the water. She wonders out loud: “Do you think the world still thinks of these kids?”

“Not really,” Illiaña chimes in as she emerges from the water, dripping wet in her basketball shorts.

“So you think they’re just like, ‘Whatever’ now?” Jessica asks.

“Yeah, there are other things that are happening in the world,” Illiaña responds before diving into the creek again. A teenage boy asks Ameliaña for her number. Austin chases him off with a Nerf water gun. “Get away from my sister,” he says.

Jessica smiles.

“At least they get to be kids here and be worry-free,” she says. For a little while, everyone is happy, and the day that a teenager walked into a school with a rifle and changed their lives feels far away. That’s what Jessica and David want for their children — to be able to forget and just be normal kids again.

“I don’t want them remembered as Robb kids,” Jessica says. “I want them remembered as good kids.”

May 20

It’s four days before the one-year mark of the Robb Elementary shooting. The Treviños have decided they don’t want to be in Uvalde for it. So they’ve rented an Airbnb in Del Rio for a week.

The children are excited to go. “It’s a lot of fun over there,” David James says.

“I think the kids need a break from everything going on here,” Jessica says. “It’s just not good for them, it’s not good for their mental health.

“Maybe next year will be different.”

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

UVALDE — The Uvalde school board agreed Wednesday to fire Pete Arredondo, the school district police chief broadly criticized for his response to the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, in a vote that came shortly after he asked to be taken off of suspension and receive backpay.

Arredondo, widely blamed for law enforcement’s delayed response in confronting the gunman who killed 21 people at Robb Elementary, through his attorney, George E. Hyde. The meeting came exactly three months after a at the school.

“Chief Arredondo will not participate in his own illegal and unconstitutional public lynching and respectfully requests the Board immediately reinstate him, with all backpay and benefits and close the complaint as unfounded,” Hyde .

Arredondo didn’t attend the meeting, citing death threats made against him.

But about 100 people, including relatives of the shooting victims, showed up for the vote. Many chanted “coward” and “no justice, no peace.” Four people spoke during a public comment period before the seven-member board went into closed session to deliberate Arredondo’s employment, criticizing the decision to not discuss the matter in front of the public.

“I hope they do right by us,” Brett Cross, whose son was killed in the massacre, told other attendees as trustees met behind closed doors.

For months, school officials faced intense public pressure to fire Arredondo, who was one of the first law enforcement officers to respond to the shooting at Robb Elementary on May 24. waited more than an hour to confront the 18-year-old gunman after he entered the school.

Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Hal Harrell recommended that Arredondo be fired “for good cause.” Hyde asked school officials to read a statement on Arredondo’s behalf at the meeting. They did not comply with the request.

As board members began discussing Arredondo, Felicha Lopez, whose son was killed in the massacre, told people attending the meeting that the school board needed to “protect our kids” as she wiped tears from her face.

A released in July said the responding officers lacked clear leadership, basic communications and sufficient urgency to more quickly confront the gunman, who was shot and killed after a U.S. Border Patrol tactical team entered the classroom where most of the victims were shot.

In his statement Wednesday, Arredondo’s lawyer said that the school district violated his constitutional due process rights by failing to provide him notice of the complaints against him and conduct an investigation of his response to the mass shooting ahead of the termination hearing.

Arredondo’s lawyer said that he received an email from the district on July 19, recommending his termination based on his failure to establish himself as the incident commander during the shooting, but argued the letter should have been sent earlier and in a physical format.

Arredondo was listed in the district’s active-shooter plan as the commanding officer, but the consensus of those interviewed by the House committee was that Arredondo did not assume that role and no one else took over for him, which resulted in a chaotic law enforcement response.

Reference:

In a June 9 with The Texas Tribune, Arredondo said he did not think he was the incident commander on the scene. He said he never gave any order, instead only called for assistance. Arredondo did not have his police radio while he was inside Robb Elementary because he wanted both of his arms free to engage the shooter, he said.

Arredondo testified to the House committee that he believed the shooter was a “barricaded subject” instead of an “active shooter” after seeing an empty classroom next to the one where the shooter was hiding.

“With the benefit of hindsight, we now know this was a terrible, tragic mistake,” the House report stated.

Training for active-shooter scenarios directs law enforcement responders to prioritize the lives of innocent victims over those of officers. For a barricaded suspect, officers are not advised to rush in.

The report criticized Arredondo’s focus on trying to find a key to open the door to the room the shooter was in, which “consumed his attention and wasted precious time, delaying the breach of the classrooms.” The report said the classroom door didn’t lock properly and likely wasn’t locked as police waited to confront the shooter.

Hyde, Arredondo’s lawyer, asserted that his client should not have been assigned as the incident commander. He argued the Uvalde County sheriff should have been in charge of the incident given that this office was the only law enforcement agency that knew the gunman had shot his grandmother prior to traveling to Robb Elementary.

Vicente Salazar, whose granddaughter was killed in the attack, told other meeting attendees Wednesday that, in addition to Arredondo, the Uvalde County sheriff should also be fired. He encouraged residents to be more civically engaged.

“We need to take Uvalde back for our people,” he said.

State Sen. , a San Antonio Democrat whose district includes Uvalde, also attended the meeting.

“It’s 90 days too long to do the right thing,” he said before the school board’s vote.

Gutierrez said other law enforcement agencies also failed in their response and urged residents to keep pushing for accountability.

“I encourage you to keep fighting,” Gutierrez said.

In the Wednesday letter to trustees, Arredondo’s legal team also directed blame back at the school district for allegedly not taking the police chief’s security advice.

“If the school district would have prioritized Chief Arredondo’s request over a year prior to the incident, for key-card locks, better fencing, better training, and more equipment, [it] could have been different,” the letter said.

The Texas House committee’s report investigating the shooting also cited the school’s lack of preparedness for an armed intruder. Some Uvalde residents have also pushed for the termination or resignation of Harrell, the superintendent who recommended Arredondo’s termination. Trustees met behind closed doors on Monday to discuss complaints about Harrell but took no action on the matter. On Wednesday, school board members did not speak about their decision to fire Arredondo and quickly adjourned the meeting after their vote.

Arredondo was elected to the Uvalde City Council a few weeks before the shooting but wasn’t sworn in until after the massacre. After missing several meetings, Arredondo stepped down from his District 3 seat to “minimize further distractions,” he said.

Jesse Rizo, whose niece was killed in the shooting, said Arredondo’s termination would help people begin healing. But he also said that other law enforcement officers and agencies should be held accountable.

Rizo also expressed shock that Arredondo asked to be reinstated from suspension with backpay.

“The audacity,” he said. “Who would come up with that? You didn’t have a car wreck into a stop sign. You had a loss of life. Twenty-one of them.”

Zach Despart contributed to this story.

This article originally appeared in a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org

Pacing along bookcases that came up to his chest, a man, dressed in a black hoodie and carrying a long gun, charged into Walsh Middle School’s library.

He fired rounds into the carpet — loud booms and eruptions of smoke punctuating each shot. Within seconds, two armed educators pursued the gunman, shooting him with fake ammunition, forcing him to the ground and securing his gun.

A school police officer arrived a moment later and yelled at all three to raise their hands in the air.

“School marshal, school marshal,” the two educators yelled.

This Round Rock event is an example of the scenario-based training Texas uses to prepare educators to carry firearms on campus.

, namely through the school marshal program, but few districts opted in. Only 256 employees are trained to carry a gun onto campuses as marshals, representing a fraction of the state’s nearly 750,000 public school staffers.

Since the school shooting in Uvalde, the state agency overseeing the marshal program is urging more districts to arm educators, and proponents believe more money and training opportunities are crucial to expanded access. State leaders are calling for better school security through physical upgrades and by increasing the number of armed personnel.

“We all have concerns about putting guns in our schools, but at the same time, we know that these events are on the rise,” said Huffman Superintendent Benny Soileau, who serves as a school marshal in his 3,400-student district near Houston. “We’ve got to have a way of combating this. And in the event something like this were to happen, we want to be well prepared to protect our kids.”

Gov. Greg Abbott to encourage schools to increase “the presence of trained law enforcement officers and school marshals on campuses.”

The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement doubled the number of training opportunities this summer from two to four so that school districts can add marshals. The agency is focused on expanding availability of the program even further.

The marshal program has existed for almost a decade. Private schools and community colleges can also participate. Only 62 of the state’s more than 1,000 school districts have marshals.

The names of districts and employees participating in either school marshals or the guardian plan are confidential, though some officials, such as Soileau, have publicly discussed implementing the programs.

In recent weeks, more school leaders have called the commission asking for details about how the marshal program works. Cullen Grissom, the commission’s deputy chief, said he couldn’t quantify the increase.

Having an armed staff member on campus doesn’t guarantee a school shooter will be stopped or prevented from carrying out an attack.

School marshals have no legal obligation to act during a threat.

During the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, an armed school resource officer never went inside the school or attempted to engage the gunman.

In Uvalde, state and federal officials are investigating why more than a dozen officers remained in the hallway as the gunman shot at students and teachers in a nearby classroom for more than an hour.

The educators who enter the program often have a distinct drive to protect their students, Grissom emphasized.

“A marshal or a peace officer’s job in the event of an active shooter is to isolate, distract and neutralize the threat,” Grissom said.

What training looks like

Huffman County school leaders — who have had the marshal program in place since 2018, — actively identify educators they believe are qualified for the role.

“We’ll go through and talk with them extensively about the pros and cons and some of the things that they may face in the program to make sure that they are a good fit,” Soileau said. “We’re very careful with our selections.”

A variety of school staffers enter the state’s marshal training program, Grissom said. Some have background in the military, law enforcement or private security while others have limited related preparation.

Trainees must have a state handgun license and, therefore, experience working with guns. They also must be an employee of the school district and pass a psychological exam.

If they meet those requirements, they can begin training.

School marshals are required to undergo an 80-hour program, completed over a course of eight- to 10-hour days, Grissom said. Two providers offer the program across the state, including the West Central Texas Law Enforcement Academy in Abilene.

Would-be marshals learn about weapons handling and basic marksmanship. The handgun training is almost identical to that of a peace officer, Grissom said.

They must also participate in simulated events that mirror circumstances marshals may face including chasing down a gunman on campus.

“We try to simulate as best we can an active shooter coming into a school district, going after the children, doing the bad things that they do and how our school marshals will respond, using their tactics, using what they’re trained to do,” said Janna Atkins, the criminal justice manager and training coordinator with the Abilene law enforcement academy. Atkins also serves as a Texas Commission on Law Enforcement commissioner.

Some don’t make it through training.

“Not everybody’s cut out to be a school marshal. Not all educators or staff are cut out to lead an armed lifestyle inside a school,” Grissom stressed. “Some people come to the training and 
 remove themselves from the process because they don’t feel comfortable.”

Others may fail the written exam or simulated training scenarios, Atkins said.

Every two years after they are certified, marshals have to brush up on training and undergo a new psychological exam.

The state has not modified its preparation courses based on what happened in Uvalde, Grissom said. Since the deadly shooting, conflicting reports about the role of police officers have emerged calling into question whether protocols were followed and if lives could have been saved.

Grissom said the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement wants to look into whether the issues in Uvalde were because of problematic training or a misapplication of training.

Obstacles to implementation

A creates roadblocks for some schools interested in the marshal program, officials say.

The state covers the cost of the training course through a grant, but districts foot the bill for employees’ travel to sessions. They also must decide whether to pay employees for the training time and if staffers are provided guns or must bring their own.

Huffman school marshals receive a small stipend for their role. They often purchase their own equipment with the money, Soileau said.

The superintendent added that more state funding would aid schools in their rollout. But, he emphasized, it is important for local communities to decide whether to add marshals to school campuses.

, and teacher groups have criticized calls to arm educators as a response to school shootings.

“We don’t need more guns in schools,” wrote Zeph Capo, president of the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, in a letter to members. “We don’t need another roundtable to explore options; we’ve done that. We need legislation that addresses common-sense issues and ensures our children and their teachers can learn and work without constant fear for their lives.”

The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement has no record of marshals discharging their weapons at inappropriate times, Grissom said. It’s also hard to pinpoint how the marshal program has made a difference, if any, during active shooter events.

“I don’t know any of the active shooter events that we’ve had that we’ve actually had a school marshal stop it,” said Atkins, the commissioner.

In Huffman, one of the benefits of having marshals on campus is cutting down on a potentially lengthy response time. Located in an unincorporated area of northeast Harris County, the district established a school police department with officers based on campuses just a few months ago, said Police Chief David Williams.

Marshals should supplement their response, Williams said.

“The benefit we see behind that is rather than having to wait for police response, which could be several minutes away, and then you have to worry about your approach into the school and breaching is always an issue, we have people inserted inside the school ready to respond,” he said.

This originally appeared at  and is published here in partnership with the .

The Uvalde school board is formally urging Gov. to call state lawmakers back to Austin so they can raise the legal age to buy assault rifles from 18 to 21, more than two months after a gunman used such a weapon to kill 19 elementary school students and two teachers days after he turned 18.

Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District trustees approved the largely symbolic resolution in a unanimous vote on the same night they voted to delay the start of the school year. Trustees moved the first day of school from Aug. 15 to Sept. 6 so that more security improvements can be made to campuses and district staffers can receive trauma-informed training.

Uvalde County commissioners Abbott, who in June asked the Texas Legislature to form to make recommendations in the aftermath of the shooting, to call a special session to increase the legal age to buy an assault rifle. Democrats have made similar calls since the May 24 shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary. The governor is the only Texas official with the power to call special legislative sessions.

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In an emailed response to The Texas Tribune, a spokesperson from Abbott’s office said the governor “has taken immediate action to address all aspects” of the massacre in Uvalde.

“As Governor Abbott has said from day one, all options remain on the table as he continues working with state and local leaders to prevent future tragedies and deploy all available resources to support the Uvalde community as they heal,” the spokesperson said. “More announcements are expected in the coming days and weeks as the legislature deliberates proposed solutions.”

The vote on both items comes more than a week after detailed a series of “systemic failures” that allowed for the gunman to enter Robb Elementary in Uvalde and remain inside two adjoined classrooms for more than 73 minutes before law enforcement confronted him. Nearly 400 officers from numerous agencies responded to the campus that day. At least , the gunman had threatened women, carried around a dead cat and been nicknamed “school shooter,” according to the investigation.

At a school board meeting last week, Uvalde residents called for district officials to fire district police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was among the first officers to arrive at the school the day of the shooting. School board members were scheduled to discuss that Saturday, but the school district postponed the meeting at the request of the police chief’s lawyer.

For weeks, state leaders have said Arredondo was the incident commander and blamed him for law enforcement waiting more than an hour to confront the gunman. Arredondo, who was placed on administrative leave last month, that he did not consider himself the incident commander. The school district’s active-shooter response plan that he co-authored, though, says the chief will “become the person in control of the efforts of all law enforcement and first responders that arrive at the scene.”

The House report explains how the gunman — who also shot and wounded his grandmother, Celia Gonzales, before storming the school — was able to stockpile military-style rifles, accessories and ammunition without arousing suspicion from authorities, then enter a supposedly secure school unimpeded.

The report also revealed that, “while the school had adopted security policies to lock exterior doors and internal classroom doors, there was a regrettable culture of noncompliance by school personnel who frequently propped doors open and deliberately circumvented locks.” In violation of school policy, the report said, three exterior doors to the west building of the school were unlocked on the day of the shooting — one of which the gunman walked through with ease just moments before entering classrooms 111 and 112.

Trustees said Monday that they plan to add extra police officers, install bullet-proof windows, put up metal detectors and create single points of entry for visitors. School officials have also requested that state troopers be on every campus at the beginning of the school year.

Residents at the meeting questioned what additional police officers would accomplish when there were already hundreds who responded to Robb Elementary on the day of the shooting.

“Just remember it’s not about extra security,” one resident said to the school board. “Over 400 officers and 77 minutes later already proved where that got us.”

The House report also concluded that alerts set to reach the phones of school personnel in emergency situations also failed to do so in a timely manner during the shooting because of “low quality internet service, poor mobile phone coverage, and varying habits of mobile phone usage.”

School officials said they would continue training for their emergency alert system. They also said they would soon begin a Wi-Fi audit across campuses.

The investigation said frequent “bailout-related” alerts — which come when officers chase a vehicle containing suspected undocumented migrants, who then purposely crash and scatter to avoid apprehension — led teachers and administrators to respond to cautionary messages with less urgency. The predominantly Hispanic city is about 50 miles east of the border with Mexico and sits at the intersection of major highways from the border cities of Del Rio and Eagle Pass.

, who’s been reluctant to entertain changes to the state’s gun laws, has since called the House committee’s findings “beyond disturbing” and said there are critical changes needed as a result.

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Miah Cerrillo was one of the first children Dr. Roy Guerrero saw when he entered the emergency room at Uvalde Memorial Hospital on May 24. A pediatrician, he’s known the fourth grader since she was a baby and underwent the liver surgeries that saved her life. 

Both testified Wednesday before a House Oversight Committee addressing gun violence after the recent mass shootings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. 

“Her whole body was shaking from the adrenaline coursing through it,” Guerrero said. “The white ‘Lilo and Stitch’ shirt that she wore was covered in blood.”

In a recorded message, Miah described watching the gunman shoot her teacher in the head and then turn his weapon on a friend next to her.

“He shot some of my classmates and the whiteboard,” said Miah, who used her dead teacher’s phone to call 911 for help. “I thought he was going to come back to the room, so I grabbed the blood and put it all over me.”

The dramatic testimony offered members of Congress — and the nation — a chance to hear firsthand from a child who lived through the mass shooting by an 18-year-old gunman that left 19 fourth graders and two teachers dead. It came the same day the House passed  of bills that would increase the age to buy certain semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21, create new penalties for gun trafficking and require safe storage of firearms. 

The legislation likely won’t go far in the Senate. A bipartisan group of senators is trying to build support for a of less expansive reforms in order to hit the 60 votes needed to pass. 

Among the measures under review are Red flag laws, designed to prevent gun sales to individuals who pose a threat, and efforts to strengthen mental health services. But passage , with some Republicans already pushing back on increasing age limits to purchase firearms. 

“I wish something would change — not only for our kids, but every single kid in the world,” said Miah’s father, Miguel Cerrillo, who attended the hearing in person. “Schools are not safe anymore.”

On video, Miah said, “I don’t want it to happen again.” When her father asked her if she thought it could, she nodded. 

The parents of Lexi Rubio, among the children murdered in Uvalde, also testified by video. Kimberly Rubio, her husband Felix beside her, described attending her two younger children’s award ceremonies at Robb Elementary the morning of the shooting and taking the last photo of their daughter, who posed with her teacher.  

“We don’t want you to think of Lexi as just a number. She was intelligent, compassionate and athletic. She was quiet, shy, unless she had a point to make,” said Kimberly Rubio. “Today we stand for Lexi, and as her voice, we demand action.” 

Other witnesses underscored  Republicans’ objections to tighter gun restrictions. 

Lucretia Hughes, whose 19-year-old son Emmanuel was shot and killed at a party in 2016, spoke on behalf of DC Project, Women for Gun Rights. Democratic proposals will only “embolden the criminals,” she said. “Gun owners are not the enemies in these gun control policies.”

Amy Swearer, a legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, argued that states should use COVID relief funds to increase mental health services and enhance the physical safety of schools.

“Many of you are the same ones mocking anybody for ‘talking about doors’ when a single locked door in Uvalde would likely have saved 21 lives,” she said, also voicing objection to raising the age to purchase semi-automatic rifles. “Eighteen to 20-year-olds are legal adults, otherwise endowed with all of the rights and duties of citizenship, including the right to keep and bear arms.”

‘It’s more complicated’ 

Since the Uvalde shooting, Republicans have advocated for and parents and recruiting to protect schools. Some governors have moved to enact their own policies.

On Monday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed passing the age limit Swearer testified against, while in Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said he would sign allowing teachers and other school staff members to be armed after completing 24 hours of training. 

In Oklahoma, Secretary of Education Ryan Walters, appointed by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, advocated for similar measures last week in on Twitter.

“We should ensure that some of them are armed so that gunmen do not enter into our schools with the ability to inflict this kind of damage without being confronted with someone with a gun,” he said. 

That sparked from Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Deborah Gist, who posted a thread suggesting he was oversimplifying the issue.

“The purpose of my initial thread was to say it’s more complicated than that,” she said in an interview. “When you’re a state leader, you have a responsibility to take safety very seriously, but also to take policy very seriously.”

Her post came just three days before a gunman killed four and injured several others at 

Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa.

“When you know a place and you know people, it’s very close to home,” she said. “No question that it feels more personal.”