From CNN Staff
(CNN) — The audio recordings of 911 calls from the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting will be released Wednesday afternoon, after a state attorney dropped his attempt to block the disclosure.
State Attorney Stephen Sedensky, whose office conducted an investigation into the shocking mass shooting, said Monday he was withdrawing an appeal of a decision by the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission to release the calls.
Sedensky said he discussed his decision with attorneys for the Connecticut town and lawyers from the office of the chief state’s attorney.
The release of the recordings will be administered by the attorneys for the Town of Newtown, Sedensky said through a written statement.
Last week, Connecticut Superior Court Judge Eliot Prescott upheld the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission’s ruling to release calls related to the December 2012 shooting.
The Associated Press had challenged authorities’ refusal to release the 911 tapes.
The calls are scheduled to be made public at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday.
Sedensky’s office issued a 44-page report last week that concluded the shooter was a mentally ill recluse who never gave any indication that he was planning to kill people.
The massacre at Sandy Hook left 26 people dead, including 20 children, making it the second-deadliest shooting in U.S. history.
The gunman, Adam Lanza, shot himself at the end of his 11-minute rampage.
The killings in Newtown, about 60 miles outside New York, happened less than five months after a similar bloodbath at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, outside Denver.
Those mass slayings triggered a nationwide debate over gun violence, school safety and mental health, a debate that produced some new restrictions on firearms in several states.
A backlash against those laws by gun-rights advocates followed, and there was only limited action on a federal level after a Republican filibuster blocked expanded background checks for gun buyers.
CNN’s Yon Pomrenze and Matt Smith contributed to this report.
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