Uvalde mayor accuses Texas DPS of a cover up in response to school shooting
Don McLaughlin, the mayor of Uvalde, Texas, sat down Tuesday with CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz and hurled a startling accusation at the Texas Department of Public Safety, specifically Director Steve McCraw. McLaughlin accused McCraw of a cover-up of the botched police response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School six weeks ago that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
McLaughlin began, “It’s a cover up on…” “On DPS?” Prokupecz cut in. “They’re covering up?” “McCraw’s covering up…” McLaughlin began again before Prokupecz once again interrupted, asking, “For who?” “For maybe his agencies,” McLaughlin answered, “or maybe he told the story he told.”
McLaughlin later said of McCraw, “He’s going to have to be held accountable when this is all said and done too. We all are. I mean, like I said, your story can’t change on something this horrific four times in three days, and that’s what it’s done.”
Questions have persisted about the slow police response to the shooting. Officers were reportedly outside for over an hour before confronting the shooter. While McCraw has pointed the finger at local police, McLaughlin brought into question the actions of the DPS.
“When I got to that scene, there were already 30 to 40 DPS officers on the scene,” McLaughlin said. “In the various videos you see from outside, you see DPS officers running around with flak jackets on and ballistic helmets on and different things. That’s video that’s been shown from the outside. But yet, we want to talk about no presence of DPS there in the hallway? I know at one time there were 14 of them in the hallway. Now if they stayed there or not, I can’t tell you because I haven’t seen the video.”
And though six weeks out families of the victims are still waiting for answers, McLaughlin believes the truth will be revealed.
“I think we will get to the truth,” McLaughlin said. “I think they backed themselves in a corner, they don’t have a way out yet and they’re just trying to figure out, how do you — because they’ve released so much BS, in my opinion, they put themselves in a corner. So how do you come out of the corner?”
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