Police on Thursday faced questions and criticism about how long it took before they stormed a Texas elementary school classroom and ended the attack on a gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers.
Investigators were also unable to say for sure whether an armed security guard from the school district outside Robb Elementary in the town of Uvalde exchanged fire with the attacker, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos.
The cause of the massacre, the deadliest school shooting in the country from Newtown, Connecticut, a decade ago, continued under investigation, and authorities said the shooter had no known criminal or mental health record.
During the siege, frustrated spectators urged police officers to charge at the school, according to witnesses.
“Come in! Come in!” the women called the officers shortly after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24, who saw the scene from outside a house across the street.
Two relatives of one of the victims killed in Tuesday’s shooting at Robb Elementary School are comforted during a prayer vigil in Uvalde, Texas, Wednesday night. (Jae C. Hong / The Associated Press)
Chronology of the attack uncertain
Texas Department of Homeland Security director Steve McCraw said Wednesday it was 40 minutes to an hour since the shooter opened fire on the school’s security officer until the tactical equipment went off. shoot.
“The bottom line is that there was law enforcement,” McCraw said. “They got involved immediately. They contained him in the classroom.”
But a department spokesman said on Thursday that authorities were still working to clarify the timing of the attack, not knowing if the 40-minute one-hour period began when the shooter arrived at school or earlier. shoot your grandmother at home.
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“Right now we don’t have an accurate or safe timeline to offer to say the gunman was in school during that period,” Lt. Christopher Olivarez told CNN.
The head of the Border Patrol, Raúl Ortiz, did not give a timetable, but said repeatedly that the tactical agents of his agency who arrived at the school did not hesitate. He said they moved quickly to enter the building, lining up in a “pile” behind an officer holding a shield.
“What we wanted to make sure of was to act quickly, to act quickly, and that’s exactly what these agents did,” Ortiz told Fox News.
But a law enforcement official said that once inside the building, Border Patrol officers had trouble breaking down the classroom door and had to have a staff member open the room with a key. . The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.
“More could have been done,” says one grieving father
Olivarez said investigators were trying to establish whether the classroom was, in fact, closed or barricaded in some way.
Javier Cazares, whose fourth-grader daughter Jacklyn Cazares died in the attack, said she ran to school when she learned of the shooting and arrived while police were still concentrated outside.
Disgusted that the police would not move, he raised the idea of entering the school with several other spectators.
“We are in a hurry because the police are not doing anything as they are supposed to do,” he said. “More could have been done.”
“They were not ready,” Cazares added.
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Police “could have come in faster,” said Javier Cazares, the father of one of 19 children killed Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas.
Carranza had seen across the street how the suspect crashed his truck into a ditch outside the school, grabbed his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and fired at two people outside a funeral home, who fled. unharmed.
Olivarez told CNN that the out-of-school security officer was armed and that initial reports said he and Ramos had exchanged gunfire, “but right now we’re trying to corroborate that information.”
Carranza said officers should have entered the school earlier.
“There were more,” he said. “There was only one.”
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Grandma talked to the neighbor after the shooting
Before attacking the school, Ramos shot and injured his grandmother in the house they shared.
Neighbor Gilbert Gallegos, 82, who lives across the street and has known the family for decades, said he was shooting in his yard when he heard gunshots.
Gallegos said he saw a car moving away from home: “It turned, I mean fast, sprinkling gravel in the air.”
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On Tuesday, an 18-year-old gunman barricaded himself in a primary school classroom in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers. That, almost 10 years after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. During the years between the shootings, no significant national gun control legislation has been passed in the United States. Veronique De La Rosa’s son, Noah, was the youngest victim in Sandy Hook. He tells Jayme Poisson that he had hoped that what happened at his son’s school would be a turning point, but that now “it has become clear that thoughts and prayers are not the way out of every ‘these tragedies’.
Grandmother left the house soon, covered in blood.
“She says, ‘Berto, that’s what he did. He shot me,'” she recalled.
Gallegos said he had not heard any discussion before or after the shootings and that he had no record of harassment or abuse in the house.