What has been less close are the explanations of how a shooter was able to remain in school for almost an hour before being killed by law enforcement.
Researchers are still working on a timeline to explain how an 18-year-old gunman was able to walk into Robb Elementary School with a rifle, enter without being stopped by an unlocked door, barricade himself inside a classroom and open fire on a class full of children.
“With all the different agencies involved, we’re working on all available angles,” Victor Escalon, the South Texas regional director of the Department of Public Safety, told reporters Thursday. “We will not stop until we have all the answers we can,” he told a news conference.
A scene of chaos and confusion began to form outside the school when news of the attack spread on Tuesday.
Parents desperate to get their children to a safe place began to show up at school, asking law enforcement to let them in as they became increasingly frustrated with the delays in school. ‘face the shooter, identified as Uvalde resident Salvador Ramos.
A father said he asked law enforcement to give him his equipment.
“I myself told one of the officers that if they didn’t want to go in, they would lend me their pistol and a vest and I would go in myself to handle it, and they told me no,” said the father. . CNN. Her son survived.
Several videos captured the frantic scene as parents begged officers to come in or allow them to enter themselves. The video shows officers holding their parents behind the yellow ribbon of a police line, refusing to let them in, as screams and cries are heard in the background.
About an hour later, a U.S. Border Patrol tactical team entered the classroom and fatally shot the gunman, Escalon said.
Days after the confrontation, grieving community members are still frustrated by the delay.
“We deserve to know what happened. These parents deserve to know what happened,” Democratic State Sen. Ronald Gutierrez, whose district includes Uvalde, told CNN, adding that “I know there was a failure here.”
“After all, we have to figure out the future, so that this never happens again, what kind of failures have happened. And I think in this situation, it wasn’t what needed to be done backwards.” has said.
The Uvalde shooting is the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade and is at least the 30th shooting at a K-12 school in 2022. The attack came less than two weeks after a mass racist shooting in Buffalo, New York. York, which left Americans distressed. get rid of another act of mass violence and lead to new calls for arms law reform. While investigators are working to complete a chronology of the attack, the final remains of the victims were returned to their families Thursday night. Six surviving victims were still hospitalized Thursday, including the shooter’s grandmother, who was shot in the face by her grandson before he drove to school.
What we know and what we don’t know about the timing of filming
After shooting his grandmother at his home, Ramos drove to Robb Elementary, where he crashed his truck into a nearby ditch, a Texas Department of Homeland Security sergeant. said Erick Estrada. It is unclear why it crashed.
The shooter fired at two witnesses across the street before walking toward the school and firing at the building, according to Escalon.
There were no agents outside the school to stop Ramos when he arrived, Escalon said, contradicting previous information from authorities who said he was “engaged” by a school resources officer before entering the school.
That previous information “was not accurate,” Escalon said Thursday. The shooter “entered unhindered initially,” he said.
Ramos then entered the building through a seemingly open door at 11:40 a.m., Escalon said.
The door through which he entered is usually locked, “unless you go home with the school bus,” former principal Ross McGlothlin told CNN.
Inside the school, the shooter barricaded himself inside two adjacent classrooms and fired more than 25 times, Escalon said.
At 11:44 a.m., law enforcement arrived and entered the school. Three officers entered through the same door used by the shooter and four entered through a different entrance, DPS spokesman Chris Olivarez told CNN. When they went to confront the shooter, he fired at them and took cover.
According to Uvalde police chief Daniel Rodríguez, two officers who responded received gunshot wounds that did not endanger their lives.
“It is important for our community to know that our officers responded within minutes” along with school resource officers, he said.
Officers then called for additional tactical equipment and resources, such as body armor, as they worked to evacuate teachers and students, Escalon said. About an hour later, he said, a U.S. border patrol tactical team was able to enter and kill Ramos.
When asked for more details at a press conference about what exactly the responding agents were doing during the one-hour period, Escalon declined to provide further information.
The grieving community is aware of the consequences
In the days following Tuesday’s massacre, Uvalde’s neighbors are still in pain. For some, the devastating news continued to come when community members learned that the husband of one of the victims had also died Thursday morning.
Joe Garcia died of a heart attack just two days after his wife Irma was killed in the attack, the Archdiocese of San Antonio told CNN. Irma Garcia was a fourth-grade teacher and had been married to Joe for more than 25 years, according to a GoFundMe campaign posted by her cousin. The couple’s family says Joe died of a broken heart.
Edward Timothy Silva, a high school student who was in school, told CNN that he remembers hiding behind desks in the dark while hearing loud noises in the distance.
“She asked me if she should go to school next year,” her mother Amberlynn Diaz said. “And I just don’t want him to be afraid of school. I want him to keep learning and not be afraid to go back to school. I want him to have a normal life again.”
Tina Burnside, Carroll Alvarado, Joe Sutton, Shimon Prokupecz, Travis Caldwell, Jamiel Lynch, Andy Rose, Amanda Musa, Alexa Miranda, Monica Serrano, Amanda Jackson, Caroll Alvarado, Eric Levenson, and CNN’s Holly Yan contributed to this report.