The story of Uvalde never gets easier.
Children trapped with a mass shooter, wielding a semi-automatic weapon, for 77 minutes while law enforcement stood back.
A total of 19 youngsters and two teachers were killed.
Every aspect of what happened inside two inter-connected classrooms at Robb Elementary School is as chilling as the next.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) report lays bare the depravity of the perpetrator and dysfunction of his pursuers.
As in the passage that reads: “More than one survivor recalled hearing someone state, ‘say help if you need help’, and when a child tried to say ‘help’, the subject re-entered room 112 from room 111 and shot the victim.”
Emotion runs raw, still, in what the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, called a “shattered community and devastated country”.
Little wonder he choked back tears as he laid out the timeline of horror and the “cascading failures” that enabled it.
The response of law enforcement was defined by “chaos and confusion”, according to the DoJ report.
A key error was in treating the situation as a barricaded stand-off, requiring negotiation, rather than an active shooter event that needed urgent engagement with the gunman.
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CCTV of Uvalde shooter in school
Had that been the case, Mr Garland said: “Lives would have been saved and people would have survived.”
It is difficult for Uvalde’s bereaved, already tortured by thoughts of the 70-plus minutes their loved ones were left in the company of a killer.
For them, accountability will come closer if and when they see charges brought against officers involved.
The Uvalde County district attorney is currently conducting a criminal investigation, so that remains an open question.
What isn’t in question is what is the question – what to do about guns, and access to guns in America.
Laws in the US were tightened in the wake of the Uvalde shooting.
Congress passed legislation to enhance background checks on people under 21 wanting to buy a gun.
It’s a move that went some way towards restricting access to weapons but stopped far short of measures demanded by gun control campaigners (and sought by President Biden).
A mother of a victim is consoled. Pic: AP
Read more:
Matthew McConaughey calls for more gun control
Uvalde families push for assault rifle ban
The semi-automatic used in the Uvalde massacre was a factor in the rules of engagement for the police present – that much is made clear in interviews that investigators conducted with at least some of those involved.
The Texas Tribune reported in March 2023 that officers were reluctant to confront the gunman because he was armed with a military-style AR-15 rifle.
One said to investigators: “Once we found out it was a rifle he was using, it was a different game plan we would have had to come up with. It wasn’t just going in guns blazing, the old West style, and take him out.”
The US attorney general addressed the police response when he said, in an active shooter situation, the priority for officers is to engage the shooter with whatever “tools” they have at their disposal.
Few might argue, even if the discussion starts with the gun in the shooter’s hand, and how it got there.
For many, it’s the biggest failure of all.