Wednesday, May 24, 2023 represents the one-year anniversary of the Robb Elementary shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and CNN is marking this occasion with a special episode of The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper – Surviving Uvalde: Inside a School Shooting, premiering Sunday, May 21 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
The CNN special will feature new, exclusive reporting from the network’s senior crime and justice correspondent Shimon Prokupecz. He speaks with parents of victims, students who survived, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, and Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez for the program.
Speaking to Vanity Fair’s Charlotte Klein, Prokupecz says that covering this particular news story has been the “hardest thing in my life.” Because of Prokupecz’s and his team’s relentless work on this story, they have, at times, had the unfortunate task of being the first to show the victims’ families footage from that terrible day that they weren’t aware existed.
On being the one to deliver such painful moments, Prokupecz says that it’s a “rare and unique position that we are in, that we can give these families some of the answers that they were seeking.”
Prockupecz acknowledges his role in covering such tragedies as being very temporary. He jumps into the situation, provides the law angle to the story, and leaves once the story’s interest dies down. But with the Uvalde shooting, “because the authorities here just played games from the beginning and didn’t want to release all the information,” he opted to remain and dig deeper into the situation paying attention to the victims. “This is the only way we’re going to be able to figure out exactly what happened here,” he told his CNN superiors at that time.
And Prockupecz vows to continue covering this story. “We need to keep going,” he remarked to Vanity Fair.
Prockupecz’s work over the past 12 months did not go unnoticed as he and his CNN team were recently recognized with a Peabody Award for their relentless coverage of the shooting, which killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary.
CNN isn’t the only network covering the one-year anniversary of Uvalde this weekend. ABC News is airing its own two-hour documentary about the mass shooting, titled It Happened Here: A Year in Uvalde. The 20/20 documentary will air tonight (Friday) on ABC and stream Saturday on Hulu. John Quiñones previewed the documentary this morning on GMA.