A special grand jury was chosen in Uvalde, Texas, Friday to investigate the response to the 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School, according to the area’s local newspaper, The Uvalde Leader-News.
A grand jury investigation would represent the first publicly known development within the criminal justice system amid all the investigations into the botched police response.
The paper reports District Attorney Christina Mitchell told them the grand jury would review evidence related to the mass shooting, but declined to comment on any focus of the grand jury investigation. Jurors are expected to spend at least six months investigating the case, according to the report.
CNN has reached out to the local prosecutor and court officials but has not yet received a response.
The report of the grand jury empanelment comes a day after Attorney General Merrick Garland visited Uvalde and delivered a scathing US Justice Department review of the law enforcement response – but the two events may be unrelated. The Uvalde Leader-News reports a pool of potential grand jurors had previously been summoned to appear today.
Critical failures in leadership among specific law enforcement officers who rushed to the school are blamed by the Justice Department, whose 575-page report nearly 20 months after the massacre is the fullest official accounting of what happened, though much already was known largely through CNN investigations.
The Critical Incident Review released Thursday determined Uvalde officers had many opportunities to reassess their flawed response to the school massacre as it was still unfolding. Instead, it took 77 minutes from when the 18-year-old shooter walked into the school until he was shot.
The carnage remains among the deadliest episodes in America’s ongoing scourge of campus shootings, leaving 19 children and two teachers dead.
Ample problems also emerged after the gunman was killed, from getting students away from the school and reunited with families to how bereaved parents were told their children were dead, the release of information about what happened, and the provision of therapy services, the federal report found.
“The response to the May 24, 2022, mass casualty incident at Robb Elementary School was a failure,” the Justice Department report concludes bluntly.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
CNN’s Rachel Clarke, Shimon Prokupecz, Hannah Rabinowitz, Emma Tucker, Aaron Cooper and Dakin Andone contributed to this report.
