Uvalde school officials are withholding documents about classroom security and a payout to the sacked police chief even after a court ordered such documents released in the wake of the May 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School in Texas.
CNN has viewed some of the never-before-seen emails that contain potentially damning information.
In one email, the principal warned that classroom doors frequently could not be or were not locked, nine months before a gunman walked in and opened fire, killing 19 students and two teachers.
And while bereaved parents were demanding the school board fire school police chief Pete Arredondo, a central figure in the mass failure by law enforcement who took 77 minutes to stop the gunman, district officials were asking for a “settlement offer” from his lawyer at the time.
These and other documents were all prepared in files to be released earlier this month at the end of a three-year campaign to get public records by CNN and other media companies.
