(CNN) — The US Justice Department is expected to release the findings of its probe into law enforcement’s response to the 2022 Uvalde school massacre on Thursday, a day after US Attorney General Merrick Garland met with victims’ families in Texas.
Alfred Garza III, whose 10-year-old daughter Amerie Jo Garza was among the 19 children and two teachers killed, told reporters the meeting “went OK,” and he hoped the report might “answer some of the questions that we didn’t know.”
“We had a lot of questions asked in there and I think they’re really going to give us a lot of insight (in the report) on some of the stuff we maybe didn’t know,” he added. Garza said he did get some of his own questions answered tonight, but didn’t want to get into the specifics ahead of the report’s release.
Relatives were not provided a copy of the report during the meeting but were briefed by Garland about its content.
The parents of victim Khloie Torres left the meeting early, after about an hour. Ruben and Jamie Torres expressed disappointment, telling CNN they essentially didn’t hear anything new.
Khloie, who survived the May 24 massacre, was 10 years old when she was trapped inside Robb Elementary School with the gunman who slaughtered her friends and teacher. She made repeated calls to 911 throughout the incident.
More than a year after the tragedy, the community is still grappling with why it took 77 minutes for law enforcement to stop the gunman, who had holed up in two adjoining classrooms as more than 370 law enforcement officers gathered at the scene.
The botched response went counter to a widely taught protocol for active shooter situations that calls for police to immediately stop the threat.
Frustrations and criticism continued to build in the months after the shooting as some authorities gave contradicting narratives about how the response unfolded.
A preliminary Texas House investigative committee report released in July 2022 found “systemic failures and egregious poor decision making” by several law enforcement agencies.
Oscar Orona, whose son Noah survived the massacre after being shot in the back, said he’s hopeful the report will illustrate authorities’ “abysmal failure” to the public.
“We look forward to seeing the report because I think it will validate a lot of our feelings already as to what transpired and what should have happened,” the father told reporters after the Wednesday meeting.
The DOJ said its goal in releasing its critical incident review Thursday is “to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses; identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events; and provide a roadmap for community safety and engagement before, during, and after such incidents.”
Once the report is released, the “next step is to find out what will be done with this information,” Amerie Jo’s grandmother, Berlinda Arreola, told CNN.
Families were not given many specific details about the report’s contents, but they were told it was a “very thorough investigation,” said Brett Cross, the legal guardian of Uziyah Garcia, who was killed.
“We still have to process it emotionally, and hopefully this will bring some changes and some accountability that we’ve been fighting and asking for since the very beginning,” he said.
Conflicting stories and lingering questions
Officers from 23 agencies, including the US Border Patrol, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the local police department, participated in the response and officials have given conflicting narratives about what happened that day.
Law enforcement experts and victims’ families have questioned whether lives could have been saved if authorities had acted sooner.
Surveillance video of officers waiting in the school’s hallway while the gunman roamed the two classrooms with dead and injured children inside raised questions about the response. Some slain victims were still alive in the time it took officers to breach the classrooms and kill the gunman.
There has also been confusion about exactly who was in charge at the scene. Some investigators said it should have been former Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, though Arredondo has said he did not consider himself to be the incident commander.
Arredondo was fired three months after the shooting.
The more than 90 officers from the Texas Department of Safety who were on scene have also faced scrutiny.
Seven DPS officers were investigated for their responses, the agency told CNN last year. Two were “served with employment discharge notifications, one was served with a formal written reprimand and the remaining four were closed without sustained findings,” the agency said.
Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell previously said she will charge law enforcement officers in relation to the response if warranted. She has said the criminal investigation could take years.
(Copyright (c) 2026 CNN. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)