District Attorney Christina Mitchell said the grand jury would
review evidence and weigh possible criminal charges, the San
Antonio Express-News reported on Friday.
Mitchell, whose district includes the town of Uvalde about 80
miles (130 km) west of San Antonio, did not respond to Reuters
requests for comment.
The 18-year-old shooter at Robb Elementary School was shot dead
by police but not until they waited more than an hour before
breaking into the adjoining fourth-grade classrooms, in what a
U.S. Justice Department review called a critical failure.
Lives would have been saved if police from several agencies had
followed generally accepted practices for an active shooter
situation and immediately attempted to take him down, Attorney
General Merrick Garland told a press conference in Uvalde on
Thursday.
It was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history,
but like the other has had little effect on gun regulation, as
courts and legislatures have generally upheld the individual
right to carry arms.
Mitchell said her decision to investigate was not in response to
the Justice Department report as she had planned to convene the
grand jury before knowing the review would be made public, the
Express-News reported.
She did not disclose what the grand jury would focus on in its
secret proceedings. But she previously said the issues of
whether police could be held criminally responsible or whether
anyone helped the shooter buy weapons or ammunition could be
subject to investigation, the newspaper said.
The Uvalde Leader-News, without attribution, reported that a
dozen people were selected on Friday to serve on the special
grand jury, which was expected to spend at least six months
studying the events of May 24, 2022.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta and Steve Gorman; Editing by William
Mallard)
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