Body camera footage captured the moment the Uvalde school police chief repeatedly begged an 18-year-old gunman to put down his weapon after he opened fire in a classroom

Body camera footage captured the moment the Uvalde school police chief repeatedly begged an 18-year-old gunman to put down his weapon after he opened fire in a classroom.

Robb Elementary School Police Chief Peter Arredondo was recorded standing outside the classroom trying to negotiate with Salvador Ramos – rather than engage with the mass shooter, who ultimately never responded to his pleas.

Arredondo urged the teen to talk to him, trying to assure him that ‘this could be peaceful’ and asking him to ‘please put your firearm down’.

Despite his efforts, another round of gunshots was heard from the classroom.

‘Can you hear me sir?’ Arredondo asked following the shots.

‘Sir, if you can hear me, please put your firearm down, sir. We don’t want anybody else hurt.’ 

Angry parents and community members have called for Arredondo’s termination since the May 24 massacre that left 21 dead. 

He was placed on administrative leave last month. 

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin disclosed previously that another on-site negotiator had tried calling Ramos but the gunman never answered the phone.

Meanwhile, the Texas House investigative committee released a preliminary report Sunday revealing officials found ‘multiple systemic failures’ and poor leadership by law enforcement the day of the shooting.

The newly-released video showed that Arredondo tried to speak with Ramos several times from the school hallway.

During his initial attempt at communication, Arredondo seemed unaware that Ramos had barricaded himself in a classroom with students.

‘Let me know if there’s any kids in there or anything,’ Arredondo pleaded. ‘This could be peaceful.’

The officer, met with no response continued: ‘Can you tell me your name, anything that can help please?’ But, Ramos did not answer.  

Minutes later a 911 dispatcher alerted police that a student had called, revealing children and teachers were trapped with the gunman.

Six minutes later Arredondo is seen trying to open the door to a nearby classroom with a set of keys, but fails to do so. 

He passes the keys off to another officer who does make entry into the room.

Additional officers, who are more heavily armored, arrive on scene but little action appears to be taken.

Then, another round of shots are fired, prompting Arredondo yet again to plead with the shooter.

‘Can you hear me sir?’ he asked.

‘Sir, if you can hear me, please put your firearm down, sir. We don’t want anybody else hurt.’

Someone is heard saying ‘I know, I know’ and another officer says: ‘That’s what we’re doing, we’re trying to get him out.’

It was still at least another 30 minutes before police entered the classroom where Ramos had barricaded himself and killed him.

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin released body camera footage from the mass shooting on Sunday, days after an 82 minute video of the shooting was posted online by the Austin American Statesman and KVUE.

The video documents the apparent confusion Uvalde cops faced on May 24 when Ramos entered a classroom inside Robb Elementary School and began firing – killing 19 students and two teachers inside.

Officers were told that day by Arredondo that the situation had changed from an active shooter situation to one of a barricaded suspect – forcing them to act with more caution even as Ramos continued to fire. 

The footage begins with Officer Gazaway standing outside the building at around 12.04pm  and slowly entering the building, where several other officers are waiting with their rifles drawn.

Some officers were still waiting outside at the time, chatting by the entrance to the school, while others were chatting in the hallway at the school.

At around 12.08pm, the footage goes dark, only to return moments later to show more cops standing inside the hallway, apparently waiting for orders about what to do.

For the next several minutes, Gazaway seems to pace up and down the hall apparently looking for someone to give him direction, as sergeants can be seen pointing and talking to some of the officers.

There is no sound in the footage, so it is unclear what they were saying. 

By around 12.19pm more officers seemed to be gathered in the hallway after some abandoned their post outside.

One man in a blue checkered shirt was even wearing a ballistic vest identifying him as ‘Sheriff.’

Meanwhile, a man with a ‘Texas Ranger’ vest continued to bark orders at the officers, but soon he leaves the building talking on his phone.

Finally at around 12.21pm a swarm of officers could be seen running down the hallway, apparently toward classrooms 111 and 112, where Ramos was firing.

The video ends with Border Patrol agents finally entering the classrooms, where they would fatally shoot Ramos. 

The footage comes amid the release of a 77-page report by the Texas House of Representatives which holds state and federal cops largely responsible for the Uvalde school massacre.

The House probe marked the most exhaustive attempt so far to determine why it took more than an hour for police and other officers to confront and kill Ramos.

The report blasted ‘system failures and egregious poor decision making’ by nearly all those in power during the attack, noting how 376 law enforcement officers rushed to the school in a chaotic scene marked by a lack of clear leadership and sufficient urgency.

‘Other than the attacker, the Committee did not find any “villains” in the course of its investigation,’ the report stated.

‘Instead, we found systemic failures and egregious poor decision making.’

‘The void of leadership could have contributed to the loss of life as injured victims waited over an hour for help, and the attacker continued to sporadically fire his weapon.’

It also claimed the 149 US Border Patrol agents and 91 state police on the scene should have helped with the ‘unfolding chaos.’

‘There was an overall lackadaisical approach by law enforcement at the scene,’ the report read.

‘For many, that was because they were given and relied upon inaccurate information. For others, they had enough information to know better.’

The bottom line, the report found, is that ‘law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety.’ 

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that the city had placed Lieutenant Mariano Pargas, who was the acting city policy chief on the day of the shooting, on administrative leave.

State police officials have sharply criticized the leadership of Arredondo, the police chief of the school district’s six-man police force, who state police have said was in control of the scene.

But the report noted that hundreds of officers from agencies that were better trained and better equipped than the school police force badly failed, too.

‘Despite an obvious atmosphere of chaos, the ranking officers of other responding agencies did not approach (Arredondo) or anyone else perceived to be in command to point out the lack of and need for a command post, or to offer that specific assistance,’ the report stated.

‘These local officials were not the only ones expected to supply the leadership needed during this tragedy.’

‘Hundreds of responders from numerous law enforcement agencies – many of whom were better trained and better equipped than the school district police – quickly arrived on the scene.’

‘In this crisis, no responder seized the initiative to establish an incident command post,’ the report said.

‘Despite an obvious atmosphere of chaos, the ranking officers of other responding agencies did not approach the Uvalde CISD chief of police or anyone else perceived to be in command to point out the lack of and need for a command post, or to offer that specific assistance.’

The report also found that the Robb Elementary School failed to adhere to a number of basic safety protocols, which included a lack of keys leading to teachers regularly leaving doors unlocked or propping them open.

Door and lock maintenance did not receive adequate attention from the school district, the report noted, pointing out that though the lock in one of the rooms where the shooting took place was known to be unreliable, it was not repaired.

‘In particular the locking mechanism to Room 111 was widely known to be faulty, yet it was not repaired,’ the report said. 

‘The problem with locking the door had been reported to school administration, yet no one placed a written work order for a repair.’ 

Unreliable Wi-Fi in parts of the school also led to a poor use of an app intended to notify the school of a lockdown in the event of an emergency. 

Teachers also often responded without urgency to lockdown notifications on the app because they were desensitized by its overuse in situations involving nearby border patrol activity.  

Robb Elementary is located about one hour from the US-Mexico border, and teachers would often be notified about illegal migrants who were being pursued by border patrol in the area. 

There were 47 ‘lockdown’ events at the school between May and February, 90 percent of which concerned border patrol activity. 

Additionally, the report revealed that Ramos provided a number of warning signs that he was dangerous, but that nobody did anything to address them. 

In one incident, Ramos sent someone a message on Instagram on April 2 saying ‘Are you still gonna remember me in 50 something days?’

‘Probably not’ the person responded.

‘Hmm alright we’ll see in may,’ Ramos said back.

He was also obsessed with gore and violent sex online, posting videos of suicides and beheadings, and harassing women who he played video games with. 

He was also fired from his job at a Whataburger after threatening a female coworker. 

Despite his violent behavior, no red flags were raised about Ramos and he was never reported to authorities. 

The report is the result of one of several investigations into the shooting, including another led by the Justice Department. 

A report earlier this month by tactical experts at Texas State University alleged that a Uvalde police officer had a chance to stop the gunman before he went inside the school armed with an AR-15.

But in an example of the conflicting statements and disputed accounts since the shooting, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin has said that never happened.

That report had been done at the request of the Texas Department of Public Safety, which McLaughlin has increasingly criticized and accused of trying to minimize the role of its troopers during the massacre.

Steve McCraw, the head of Texas DPS, has called the police response an abject failure.  

The video showed in harrowing detail how police lingered in the hallway outside the classroom where Ramos was holed up for over an hour as they were ordered to stand down by Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Peter Arredondo.

Arredondo was placed on leave after the shooting before resigning from his post.

Meanwhile, calls for police accountability have grown in Uvalde since the shooting.

So far, Arredondo is the only officer from the scene of the deadliest school shooting in Texas history is known to be on leave. 

While Ramos could be heard unloading shots in a classroom, officers could be seen running away from the gunfire, checking their phones, helping themselves to hand sanitizer, and exchanging high fives.

At one point an officer whose daughter was inside the classroom was seen being restrained by fellow officers preventing him from attempting to rescue his daughter.

The video shows how it took officers a full 77-minutes to breach the door to the classrooms where Ramos unloaded more than 100 rounds into his victims. 

Ramos entered the school at 11:33am, and wasn’t shot dead until 12:50pm. 

The gunman wasn’t stopped until Border Patrol agents entered the building and shot and killed him. 

The video begins at 11:28 am from the point of view of a camera in the Robb Elementary School parking lot. 

It shows Ramos violently swerving his car around a corner and crashing into a ditch in the distance.

A plume of dusty smoke emerges from the scene of the crash. 

Two unknown men approach the car, Ramos responds by firing shots at the them.

The two men run for their lives, across the road and toward Robb Elementary School. 

Two minutes later, a teacher is heard telling a 911 operator: ‘I do not see him.

I cannot see him.’ The camera switches to a camera pointing at Robb Elementary School. She says: ‘The kids are running. Oh my God.’

Her voice breaks in desperation as she cries: ‘Oh my God.’