‘Nothing Was Adding Up’: CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz Says There Are Still Unanswered Questions in Uvalde

CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz is used to covering mass shootings in America. But when he landed in Uvalde, Texas to cover the massacre at Robb Elementary School eight months ago, he could tell the story was going to be much different.

Prokupecz, an Emmy award-winning journalist and senior crime and justice correspondent at CNN, spoke with Mediaite editor in chief Aidan McLaughlin about covering the tragedy and his fight to find the truth in the eight months since on this week’s episode of The Interview podcast.

On May 24, 2022, a gunman entered the Texas school, proceeding over the course of more than an hour to kill 19 children and two adults. As the immediate horror of the tragedy subsided, reporters began raising serious questions about the police response.

Prokupecz, who rushed to Texas for CNN within days of covering another mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, said it was clear from the beginning that something was wrong with the police response in Uvalde.

“The fallout started happening almost immediately when we hit the ground and we just couldn’t get answers to basic questions,” Prokupecz said. The main question, and one that still remains unclear, is “why did it take so long for officers to go inside the classroom?”

On the day of the shooting, Prokupecz said clarity was unusually elusive.

“The problem was, we were hours and hours into this,” he said. “It was the evening by the time I was trying to get information and everyone was kind of giving me a different story about what happened.”

“It didn’t make any sense to me,” he said. “Nothing was adding up.”

Prokupecz said the department was more preoccupied with casting officers in a “heroic light” than giving detailed information on what happened.

“The more the police tried to defend themselves, the more it was raising all kinds of red flags. And the inability to get some very specific information that should have been easy to get, but we weren’t able to get,” he recalled.

Prokupecz also explained the case of Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was fired in August 2022 over his delayed response to the shooting.

Prokupecz recently broke the story of Arredondo’s interview to investigators the morning after the shooting. He said the chief’s answers should have “raised red flags” to the FBI and Texas Rangers that proper protocol was not followed.

“He’s giving all kinds of reasons and excuses for why he didn’t go into the classroom,” Prokupecz said. “And his concern was more about kids and people who are not inside that classroom. Because he assumed that everyone in that classroom was likely dead.”

Arredondo, it turns out, made a series of grave mistakes, including telling other officers to stand down — even while they heard the gunman pause to reload his weapon. Arredondo also spent precious time trying to find a key to open a classroom where the shooter was — despite the door not being locked.

Despite expressing sympathy for the officers who responded to the shooting, Prokupecz said he has no sympathy for Arredondo. “I don’t think he has ever understood what happened here and how screwed up all of this was,” he said.

Eight months later, Prokupecz said there are still more unanswered questions surrounding the events of May 24, 2022 — a highly unusual case for something like a mass shooting.

“There are some gaps in the communication of whether or not the Department of Public Safety — the Texas DPS knew more than they’ve let on in the early stages,” he said. “Understanding more of what they knew early on is still kind of unclear.”

During the interview Prokupecz also discussed how he covers crime across America and whether he has become desensitized to mass shootings.

Listen above via Mediaite’s The Interview Podcast.

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