“People will ask why we are taking so long,” a police official said at the scene of the shooting, according to the Times, citing a transcript of camera footage of law enforcement.
“We’re trying to preserve the rest of our lives,” the transcript says, according to the Times.
“We are ready to break, but this door is closed,” said Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the police chief of the school district of Uvalde, around 12:30, the Times reported, citing a transcript. Arredondo has been identified by authorities as the officer who directed the law enforcement’s faulty response to the shooting.
The Times reported that officers had become impatient and expressed concern.
“If there are children in there, we have to get in there,” an agent was quoted as saying by the Times, citing investigative documents.
“Whoever is in charge will determine that,” another officer said.
According to the chronology of events on CNN, the first officers entered the school building at approximately 11:35 a.m., just moments after the 18-year-old gunman, who killed 19 young students and two teachers that day.
At approximately 11:44 a.m., officers at the scene requested additional resources, equipment, body shields and negotiators, and evacuated students and faculty, officials said earlier.
At 12:03 p.m., there were “up to 19 officers” concentrated in the school hallway, while the gunman was inside the adjacent classrooms where the massacre took place.
At the same time, a student in one of the adjoining classrooms called 911 to identify herself and the classroom where she was, authorities said. He called again at 12:13 and then a few minutes later, telling the dispatchers that there were eight to nine students still alive, according to authorities.
Law enforcement broke down the classroom door at 12:50 p.m., using the keys of a janitor, and shot and killed the suspect.
At a May 27 press conference, Department of Homeland Security director Steven McCraw said the classroom was not immediately broken because the commander of the incident, Arredondo, thought the scene was a ” barricade subject situation “and not an active shooter situation. He said the district police chief believed that “there was time to recover the keys and wait for a tactical team with the equipment to come forward and break down the door and address the issue.”
“From the benefit of the retrospective where I’m sitting now, of course, it wasn’t the right decision,” McCraw said at the time about the supervisor’s call not to face the shooter. “It was a wrong decision. Point. There is no excuse for that.”
CNN has contacted DPS and Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee’s office to comment.
Trying to get more answers about the tragedy, a Texas House inquiry committee held its first mission hearing on Thursday and could produce a preliminary report later this month.
A source close to the committee said the report is expected to focus only on the facts and include a chronological sequence of events, a timeline and details about the shooter. The committee is quasi-judicial and has the power to summon, and all witnesses will be under oath, the source said.
The Texas Rangers, an investigative branch of the state Department of Public Safety, are also investigating the massacre and response by law enforcement. The U.S. Department of Justice is also reviewing law enforcement’s response to a request from Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin.
In a statement Thursday in response to a Times article, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s press secretary, Renae Eze, said: “Investigations by the Texas Rangers and the FBI are ongoing. , and we hope that the full results will be shared with the victims “families and the public, who deserve the whole truth of what happened that tragic day.”
CNN’s Christina Maxouris and Rosa Flores contributed to this report.