Critical failures in leadership among specific law enforcement officers who rushed to Robb Elementary 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 investigation.

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 finds.

Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose daughter Lexi was killed, fought through tears at a separate news conference Thursday at which victims’ families demanded accountability – and gun reform – to prevent a shooting like the one at Robb Elementary.

The litany of errors committed by responders that day runs from the early on – with no one checking whether the door connecting the two classrooms was locked, even as that should be “the first immediate approach” – through the scramble after the gunman was killed and into the night when parents were told their children were dead, the Justice Department’s report finds.

Initial crime scene investigation was hampered by too many people going to have a look at classrooms 111 and 112, while the gunman’s hellfire trigger system – only later recovered from a trash can – was not catalogued as evidence because teams didn’t know what it was or its possible relevance, the Justice Department report finds.

And though the Justice Department report marks the most robust effort so far to detail the school shooting nightmare, Uvalde victims’ families still don’t have all the information they need: The local district attorney has not yet completed her inquiry into what happened that day, including whether any law enforcement officer should be criminally charged.

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