The Uvalde shooting committee ignored Spanish-speaking residents. We fixed that.

UPDATE: The special Texas House committee tasked with investigating the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde released online a Spanish translation of its preliminary report on the incident Friday, five days after the English-language version was made public. Hard copies will be distributed to victims' families Monday, said Matt Crow, spokesman for committee Chairman Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock. The official publication of the translation comes two days after the American-Statesman produced a translation of the report.

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They blew it, and then they blew it again.

When a Texas House committee released its report about the school shooting in Uvalde, it said getting accurate information to the community was a systemic failure that took "a very real toll on the people of Uvalde."

"That was told to us multiple times, that the back and forth, or the out of context, or the mistruths or half truths were harmful in and of themselves,"  said state Rep. Joe Moody, vice chair of the investigative House committee, while releasing the report Sunday. He said the community and policy makers can't move forward without "a stabilizing force of facts."

Officials had failed.

Then they provided those facts, in a report written in English, to a community that is more than 80% Hispanic or Latino, where half of residents age 5 or older speak a language other than English at home. The Spanish-only speakers were left out.

They failed again.

Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman followed up, saying the report would be translated to Spanish in the coming weeks. 

A woman in the audience yelled out, "Is that not normal practice?"

Another person followed, "Oppressed and suppressed."

Posting the video:Why the USA TODAY Network chose to publish video from inside Robb Elementary

It wasn't the first time officials investigating the shooting left Spanish-speakers out of the loop. The same week as the shooting, when DPS Chief Steven McCraw held a media conference to reveal that police had made the "wrong decision" in their response, Spanish-language media urged him to answer questions in Spanish. Instead, he walked away.

Outrageous, said Manny García, editor of the Austin American-Statesman, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Journalists at the Statesman and USA TODAY would translate and edit the entire report, all 77 pages, into Spanish and publish it as a special edition of the Statesman.

We did just that, and 10,000 papers on two pallets were delivered to Uvalde Thursday morning. García and others from the Statesman personally delivered copies to grocery stores, a pharmacy, restaurants, funeral homes, churches, the police department and library. They left a stack at Robb Elementary School next to the memorials where visitors picked up copies. The report is also available online here. 

"Those families have not gotten the information that they need and in the way they need it," García said. "The select committee operated for most of the time behind closed doors. So the families have been dependent on what information is given to them.

We reported truth:Police accounts kept changing on Uvalde. A girl's rape story was called a lie

"What better way to empower the families than the entire report that you can sit with and read in Spanish. It's one of the greatest public service efforts that I've been involved in."

We created an immersive timeline from the report using video and graphics to show what happened during those 77 minutes police were on the scene, waiting. And of course, we're offering that in both English and Spanish as well. 

"We realized we had an opportunity to make this information more accessible to a part of our audience that feels more comfortable reading in their own language," said Javier Zarracina, USA TODAY Network graphics editor.

As Moody said Sunday, the community can't move forward without a stabilizing force of facts.

Now the entire community has them. 

Read the Uvalde report in Spanish below or here.

Lea el informe de Uvalde en español aquí.

Nicole Carroll is the editor-in-chief of USA TODAY and president of the Gannett news division. The Backstory offers insights into our biggest stories of the week. If you'd like to get The Backstory in your inbox every week, sign up here.

Reach Carroll at EIC@usatoday.com or follow her on Twitter: @nicole_carroll. Thank you for supporting our journalism. Subscribe here.