In an exclusive interview with CNN, Gutierrez was asked if he agreed with a legislative report that cited a “culture of noncompliance with safety policies” at the school.
“Absolutely not,” Gutierrez said in response.
“Every time there was an alert, every faculty member on this campus took that to mean it could be a potential escalation situation,” he said.
Gutierrez said he immediately initiated a lockdown using an app called Raptor after learning a gunman had jumped a school fence.
“I feel like I followed the training that was provided to me to the best of my ability,” he said when asked if he thought he should lose his job. “And I’ll second guess myself for the rest of my life.”
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw last month called the police response an “abject failure.” He blamed the sole failure to implicate the gunman on school district Police Chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, who officials have identified as the commander at the scene.
Arredondo, who is on unpaid administrative leave, previously said there was no incident that day.
Asked about law enforcement’s delay in confronting the shooter, Gutierrez said she is frustrated but in no position to find fault.
“I’m not a law enforcement officer and I can’t judge and tell them how to do their job any more than I would ask them to tell me how to do mine,” he said. “I don’t think I’m in a position to blame anyone.”
Gutierrez added: “I would blame things that are outside of my circle of control, meaning I can’t make the laws. So I don’t get there, I can’t decide how old you have to be. buy a firearm. I can’t decide how many rounds of ammunition someone can buy. I can’t determine how much security we have available on campus.”
The principal was under the impression that my staff and students were all safe.
The principal said she prayed during the shootings and the siege that followed.
“I wanted everyone to get out safely,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave until I was assured that all my staff and all my students were out and safe. Up until the last moment, I was still under the impression that my staff and students were all safe.”
Gutiérrez has been placed on administrative leave with pay, according to her lawyer, Ricardo Cedillo.
The school board did not comment on his termination at a meeting Monday. Gutiérrez, who started as a fourth grade teacher in 2008, has worked at Uvalde CISD for more than two decades.
In a letter to members of the House Committee that investigated the shooting, Gutierrez disputed several of its findings. He said the door to Room 111, one of the two classrooms where the victims died, was checked by custodial staff every evening, including the night before the shooting. She also wrote that she doesn’t recall the teacher in that room complaining about the door not closing, according to the letter, which was released by her attorney on Wednesday.
“What I know for sure is that the door to room 111 was locked,” he said in the interview. “And the reason I know this is because we take regular walks around the campus and I myself have used my master key to open this door.”
Arnulfo Reyes, who taught in classroom 111, told CNN that Gutierrez’s claims in his letter about the door’s locking mechanism are not entirely accurate. He said he wasn’t complaining about the door being locked, but the door jamming or jamming throughout the day.
Reyes said he complained about the door getting stuck several times over three years. Reyes said the door was locked during the day and was usually locked when he arrived at the school. Asked if he remembers the door being locked on the day of the shooting, Reyes said he did not.
Gutierrez in his letter acknowledged problems with spotty Wi-Fi at Robb. He wrote that he did not use the public address system on the day of the shooting because his training was that its use could “create panic.” He denied there was a “culture of complacency” at the school and said it was “unfair and inaccurate” to conclude it was complacent about security.
Gutiérrez said in the letter that he “will live with the horror of these events for the rest of my life” and that he wants to keep his job “to be on the front lines helping the children who survived, the families of all the affected and the entire Uvalde community”.
State Rep. Dustin Burrows, the committee’s chairman, said in a statement that he had not received Gutierrez’s letter.
“The committee relied on interview testimony from various Uvalde CISD employees (including staff and administration) and the Uvalde CISD Police Department to reach its conclusions regarding the practices that they held at Robb Elementary School,” Burrows said.
A spokesman for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, citing a high volume of media requests, asked for at least two days to respond.
The report says the principal and administrators knew about the faulty lock
Gutierrez’s leave came as Uvalde officials sought to reassure frustrated parents about their children’s safety when classes resume.
The Uvalde massacre was the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. since 2012. Legislative committee report on May 24 school shooting cites “culture of non-compliance with safety policies” from Robb Elementary, including its failure to adequately prepare for the risk of an armed intruder and its routine practice of leaving doors open.
The report said Gutierrez and school administrators knew a lock in one of the classrooms where the killings occurred was not working properly and failed to repair it.
On the day of the shooting, Gutiérrez was in his office after an awards ceremony and tried to initiate a crash on the Raptor app, but “had difficulty making the alert due to a poor Wi-Fi signal. -fi,” according to the legislative report. He also did not attempt to “communicate the lockout alert over the school intercom,” the report said.
According to the legislative report, school staff “frequently opened doors and deliberately bypassed locks.” This behavior was “tacitly condoned” by school administrators and district police, and was not treated as “serious violations.”
Closing the doors as needed could have slowed the gunman’s “progress” for a few precious minutes, enough time to get alerts, hide children, and close the doors; and enough time to give the police more opportunities to confront and arrest the attacker before he could massacre 19 students. and two teachers,” the Texas House report said.
Lawmakers also criticized the police response and the failure of school officials and others to heed numerous warning signs about the shooter. His report said state and federal officers at the scene were equally to blame for the delay in confronting the shooter.
Uvalde school officials on Monday revealed efforts to improve security when classes resume early next month. Plans include installing bulletproof windows and metal detectors, hiring 10 additional police officers and identifying an entry point for each school. Five officers were employed by the district at the time of the shooting, according to the legislative report.
CNN’s Rosalina Nieves Raja Razek, Amanda Musa and Brad Parks contributed to this report.