New footage of the Uvalde school shooting in Texas shows officers standing back and failing to go in as the gunman was carrying out his mass shooting.
On 24 May, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos is said to have killed 21 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Footage of the mass shooting taken from the school's own CCTV shows a 77-minute period including the moment the shooter enters the school and the police response.
Warning, the footage contains moments which may be upsetting. Watch below:
The school footage first shows the shooter entering Robb Elementary School armed with a handgun and an AR-15 assault rifle, with which he killed 19 children and two teachers.
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Officers gathered in the corridors outside the classrooms but waited for a long period of time before going in to confront the shooter.
The shooter was barricaded in a pair of adjoining fourth grade classrooms, where he opened fire on teachers and children for more than an hour before officers made their move.
The gunman entered the school shortly after 11:30am but police didn't storm in and make an attempt to stop the shooter until 12:51pm when border patrol guards went in and killed him.
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New footage of the shooting – taken from police bodycams – has shed more light on the tragedy and why officers took so long to intervene.
According to AP, a new report from the Texas House of Representatives into the Uvalde shooting slated 'egregiously poor decision making' on the part of police as 376 officers waited to confront the shooter.
The report was produced along with the three hours of new bodycam footage, making it the most comprehensive account of the tragic shooting to date.
It blamed 'systemic failures' for allowing the shooting to go on as long as it did, noting that nobody took command of the situation despite the massing of hundreds of officers at the school.
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One officer said he'd heard about 911 calls coming from inside the classroom where the shooter was, meaning there were still some people alive inside, but still officers waited before breaching.
The report said: "At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritise saving innocent lives over their own safety."
The school was also given some blame in the report for not properly locking safety doors and failing to follow protocols in place for an active shooter attack.
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Shortly after the shooting at Robb Elementary School police admitted they had made the 'wrong decision' by not storming into classrooms sooner to confront the shooter.
Steven McCraw, director of Texas Department of Public Safety, apologised for failings in the response to the school shooting.
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Topics: US News
Joe Harker