we remember this year 2024 starting off with the January 4th tragedy in Perry the school shootings at the Perry High School that left a student the school's principal and the shooter dead late last week we learned that the Dallas County attorney says she does not plan to release a report detailing the findings of an investigation into that shooting yesterday I spoke with Samantha Hernandez De Moine register education reporter uh she's been reporting on this story along with a number of her colleagues hi Samantha hi thanks Ben tell us more about this announcement by the Dallas County attorney and the reasoning behind not releasing a report or even a summary of the report so last week following a shooting at a high school in Georgia we reached out to the Dallas county attorney's office to see what the status of the investigation report was was and at that time we learned that uh Dallas County attorney believes that under state law she is not obligated to release the report as long as it's considered to be part of an open investigation and therefore we at this time you know as things stand today you know we may not know what all happened at Perry High School the day of the shooting and uh the the Dallas County attorney here gave a statement um or or issued a statement and and declined any further questions right yes this probe was conducted by the Iowa Department of criminal investigation so it's actually their findings passed on to the Dallas County attorney and they are not in a position to release it either yeah that is my understanding that it's it's really going to be up to the Dallas County attorney about whether any any of those findings are released to the public yeah okay so the Dallas County attorney says it's not not necessary under Iowa law to release it for open records cases but there's been a lot of reaction as we can imagine to this news that there are no plans to release the report tell us about some of the reaction the Perry Education Association has called for the release of the report parents whose children are survivors of the shooting have called for its release community members there's just a lot of calls for this to be released what we often see after kind of these large scale tragedies is that the reports are used to make the school districts where they occur safer but also law enforcement and and schools around the country will take those findings and improve their own reactions and their own like plans and things like that you know we saw this after uh Uvalde um the report that was released from yal was actually used here in Iowa to improve the reactions to kind of those mass shootings mass casualty incidents and after a uh an incident where 30 School schools across the state were swatted here in Iowa one of the things we heard a lot was that their response was informed by lessons learned from you all day right and one of the the points here to make I think and you make it in your reporting is that um you know there's a detailed uh report that may have some some details that should be not be for good reason should not be released to the public but we're talking here about a a summary of the conclusions not the entire report right yeah it's really up to the county attorney to decide how much or how little of that report is to be released some places just released just a summary of the event some places release a lot of documents it's really up to the um whoever is handling that report but in this case we're just being told that at this time nothing is going to be released so as you pointed out uh Samantha you know after other school shootings Across the Nation yaldi you mentioned but also Coline going way back Sandy Hook uh marjerie Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida uh there have been reports released but there's been legal action to do that is that the path we're on here uh forced the release through through courts you know I think it's probably a little early in the process to know if that's the path we're going to take but you know one of the things we do know is that most recently media organizations in Texas had to sue for the release of that you have all their records so that would be probably the most recent example that we have right let's talk a little bit about what we um what questions still remain about the Parry school shooting start before we get to those questions by reminding us what we know about the series of events that morning January 4th 2024 so what we do know is that Dylan Butler arrived at school went into a bathroom posted a a selfie to social media before going into the lunchroom students were there having breakfast it was the first day back from from Winter brick and killed at that time was Amir joliff an 11-year-old and also fatally wounded was principal Dan marberger he ended up passing away from his injuries 10 days later others were injured including um five students and two staff members we've heard a lot in recent days from one of the mothers of of those students but there's just a lot of lot of questions that remain right he he was a Dylan Butler armed with a shotgun also a small caliber handgun so what are the main questions you see as still needing to be answered that may be answered by releasing a summary of this report there's been some speculation that Dylan Butler had been bullied so one of the other things that we don't know about this day about the day is what happened between uh Dylan Butler and principal marberger he's being hailed at as a hero by the school district families people who were there that day even uh Governor Kim Reynolds and so we don't know what actions he took that that may have saved more lives that day as I mentioned before he did succumb to injuries from the shooting 10 days after the attack all right so a lot of open questions about the motive the circumstances how those weapons were smuggled into the school whether uh Dylan Butler was bullied would be a big question wouldn't it yeah there are a lot of questions particularly in the beginning about whether Dylan Butler had been the the victim of bullying um there's also questions about how he procured the weapons that were used in the shooting all right and and part of the context of this reporting is we remember that back in February uh our legislators here in Iowa passed a law allowing the arming of school staff where were certified and U uh granted them qualified immunity uh for actions with those Firearms they may take in in such a situation so important to know at some point it seems um U some more details uh answers to questions from this report uh Samantha how will you and others at the register uh look to follow up on this story what will you be watching we're definitely watching you know what parents are doing right now because there is a a growing number of parents and community members and staff members in Perry who are calling for this report to be released we're also looking at how this issue has been handled uh nationally you know we talked a little bit about youal but as you pointed out earlier that there have just been numerous school shootings in recent years and you know we've not seen in many of those cases that the reports were not released okay thank you very much Samantha herandez De Moine register education reporter she and her colleagues have been uh following the aftermath of the Perry shooting thank you Samantha no thank you for having me on Ben