What we’ve learned from the recently released Uvalde docs after CNN first uncovered them

By Leigh Waldman, Matthew J. Friedman, Shimon Prokupecz

(CNN) — More than 2,000 pages of documents were released Wednesday by the school district in Uvalde, Texas, weeks after CNN’s exclusive reporting showed the district’s lawyers withheld records the school board and a court had ordered to be released in the wake of the massacre at Robb Elementary School in May 2022.

CNN previously reported Uvalde school officials withheld these documents, which outlined warnings about school safety issues and details about a payout to the sacked school district police chief, even after the court ordered such documents to be made public.

That reporting led the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, or UCISD, to hire new attorneys who say they are now working to release additional records.

The documents the school district shared on Wednesday provide additional insight into the issues plaguing Robb Elementary School, dating back years before the shooting that killed 19 fourth graders and two of their teachers.

$1m payout referenced for fired school police chief

Dozens of pages of documents, including email correspondence, detail the discussions around the termination of former UCISD police chief Pete Arredondo, who is at the center of the failed law enforcement response that took 77 minutes to challenge the gunman after he walked in the school, even though officers were in the building within just three minutes.

CNN exclusively reported on the existence of these documents, and talk of a million dollar settlement, in September.

The newly released documents show Arredondo’s former attorney George Hyde asked for a settlement of $1.1 million, a $25,000 relocation allowance, the remainder of his salary for the ongoing school year, more than $78,000 in legal fees to be paid and an Honorable Discharge be filed with the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

“Many ignore that Chief Arredondo is a victim in this event as well,” Hyde wrote in an email at the time to the district’s attorney, Robb D. Decker with the firm Walsh Gallegos.

In response, Decker said, “only the Board of Trustees, as a whole, can consider a settlement offer that included terms that included paying your client over a million dollars.”

Arredondo has since been charged with 10 counts of child endangerment and known criminal negligence for failing to recognize the incident as an active shooting and for failing to take proper action to intervene. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Problems with Robb Elementary’s doors

Documents released Wednesday by the district include correspondence then-Principal Mandy Gutierrez sent to the district administration about Robb Elementary’s history conducting drills.

Gutierrez was placed on administrative leave following the shooting.

The contents of these documents were first reported by CNN.

In an eight-page letter to former UCISD Superintendent Dr. Hal Harrell and other administrators, Gutierrez refuted information presented in the Texas House of Representatives Investigative Committee Report on the Robb shooting.

She provided screenshots of emails discussing issues with door locks and asking about additional keys to classrooms from August 2021. As CNN previously reported, Gutierrez wrote, “I am prioritizing student safety and am open to any practices that ensure the well-being of our students and staff.”

CNN initially reported last month that maintenance records from Robb Elementary School showed repeated issues in the West building targeted by the gunman. These records were previously withheld until their release on Wednesday.

On the day of the massacre, the shooter opened and walked through the west door with no hindrance, though it had been pulled shut by a teacher. Arriving police officers were also able to open that door, and two other entrance doors, with no key and no problem, CNN has reported.

Gutierrez’s message is the first known direct warning of concerns placed squarely in front of district leadership months before the gunman was able to walk through an unlocked door into the school and into two adjoining classrooms. Video and witness statements previously analyzed by CNN show all three entrance doors to the fourth-grade building were unlocked.

Those maintenance records have now been officially released after CNN obtained them from sources and reported on them weeks ago.

More documents anticipated

Thousands of pages of documents have been released since the first batch of materials made public by UCISD this summer, after the school board had voted weeks earlier to release the public records it held that related to the May 24, 2022, massacre. It was the worst school shooting in a decade and saw hundreds of law enforcement officers wait outside the classrooms for more than an hour while dead, dying and traumatized victims were left with the gunman.

Eight subsequent sets of documents totaling 25,120 pages were released last month.

While there were reports of as many as a million more pages of public records still to be released, the school district said in a statement, “at this time we are not able to confirm that that number accurately reflects the number of records that may be released that are not duplicative of records already previously released.”

“We expect additional documents to be made available in the next few weeks. The district remains fully committed to not only honoring the court’s directives in full but also sharing information openly with the community at large,” school district spokesperson Anne Marie Espinoza said in part in a statement on Wednesday.

There is also key Robb Elementary surveillance camera footage missing from these releases that the district says was taken by the Texas Department of Public Safety shortly after the shooting. Community members like Amy Marin-Franco, a former Robb teacher who was wrongly accused of leaving a door to the school open, have for years been pushing for the hallway video’s public release.

In a statement prior to the latest release, the district stated it “intends on filing a brief in litigation involving the media and the Texas Department of Public Safety urging the release of videos that have not been in the District’s possession since shortly after the Robb Elementary School tragedy.”

Although CNN obtained copies of the surveillance video through sources, there has still been no public release of the unedited footage.

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