Reporter Who Reviewed Entire 77-Minute Uvalde Video Tells CNN It Shows Cops ‘Arming Themselves More and More’ But Not Going After Shooter

One of the few reporters who reviewed the entire 77-minute footage of the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, told CNN on Monday that the surveillance video “totally continues to intensify questions about the overall response that awful day.”

Eighteen children and two adults were killed in the shooting.

Appearing on At This Hour With Kate Bolduan, Austin American-Statesman reporter Tony Plohetski described what he saw on the video:

I think it is as wrenching as people probably suspect it would be. It’s 77 minutes and you actually see the gunman entering the campus and entering the school, walking down a hallway, armed with his AR-15. And then you hear a hail of gunfire as he enters the classroom. About two-and-a-half minutes later you see a group of law enforcement officers enter the same hallway. They actually proceed down to that room and there is an exchange of gunfire at that point. And you see the police officers actually getting blown back, one of them actually touches his head. I think he believes that maybe he has been injured.

But then over the next more than one hour, you see on the video, police officers converging on the scene, arming themselves more and more with helmets, with assault rifles, with ballistic shields, even with teargas canisters. But essentially they stand there for one hour as these minutes ticked by and ultimately it’s not until 12:50, keep in mind that the gunmen entered the school at 11:33 a.m. It’s not until 12:50 that we then see those police officers move to that classroom, breach the door and take down the gunman.

Plohetski predicted that when the footage is released to the public, “it’s going to be very disturbing to many people and I think really deepen the tragedy that happened that day.”

Watch above, via CNN.