HOUSTON (AP) — Thousands more pages of records related to the 2022 Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas, were being released this week, after the school district’s lawyer said his firm had mistakenly failed to make public all documents as had been promised in a legal settlement.
Earlier this month, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District released thousands of pages following years of litigation to withhold documents connected to the attack that killed 19 students and two teachers, one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. The school board had voted on July 21 to release all the district’s records and end the lawsuit pursued by media organizations to make the information public.
But during the board’s meeting on Monday, attorney Robb Decker said his law firm had mistakenly failed to include thousands of pages of documents when records were released on Aug. 11.
“We are not in any way trying to hide anything. We are not in any way trying to not release things. It was truly an error on our side for reasons that are our firm’s business, but it is our error,” Decker told the school board.
Board members said about 26,000 more pages of documents and 8,600 more emails were expected to be released. Several thousand were released as of Wednesday, and Decker said all would be made available to the public by the following Wednesday.
Family members including Jesse Rizo, the uncle of 9-year-old victim Jackie Cazares and a member of the school board, were among those pushing for the records to be released.
“There’s no excuse for that sir. You can call it a mistake, you can call it an error. It’s a costly error, a very costly error,” Rizo said.
Media organizations, including The Associated Press, had sued the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and Uvalde County in 2022. A Texas appeals court in July upheld a lower court’s ruling that the records must be made public. Uvalde County released its records a day after the school district released its documents on Aug. 11.
Last year, city officials in Uvalde released body camera footage and recordings of 911 calls.
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