UVALDE, Texas – The grief of families in Uvalde, Texas, was exacerbated by anger and frustration on Thursday as police leaders struggled to answer questions about how long it took to stop a gunman from leaving. open fire on students and teachers at Robb Elementary School.
When parents began organizing the funeral, a day that was to mark the last school year, criticism deepened in the Hispanic majority farming community of 15,200 people for the prolonged police response and lack of explanation from officials. their actions.
No school police officer confronted the gunman before entering the school, a state police spokesman said Thursday, contradicting previous reports of a meeting outside and suggesting a deficit in response.
“At first he came in unhindered,” Victor Escalon, regional director of the state Department of Public Security, told a news conference. “He didn’t face anyone.”
The parents had gathered outside the school on Tuesday when gunfire erupted inside, urging police to keep them in line to enter and stop the carnage. On Thursday, the focus of some Texas and Washington lawmakers shifted from discussions about the weapon used by the 18-year-old gunman, an AR-15-style rifle, to questions about the delay of a time to end the attack. Most of the mass shootings ended in a matter of minutes, police experts said.
“I ask the FBI to use its full authority to investigate and provide a full report,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat.
Chief Daniel Rodriguez of the Uvalde Police Department and the head of the school district police, Chief Pete Arredondo, did not respond to requests for comment.
The first report of a gunman approaching the school arrived around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. Moments earlier, the gunman, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, had crashed a truck into a ditch next to the school after shooting his 66-year-old grandmother in the face at home. , a few blocks from the school.
Albert Vargas, 62, an electrician, was working at a house near Robb Elementary School and said he saw the crash.
Opinion: Texas school shooting
Times Opinion comment on the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
- Michelle Goldberg: As we face another tragedy, the most common feeling is a bitter acknowledgment that nothing will change.
- Nicholas Kristof, a former columnist for the Times Opinion: Weapons policy is complicated and politically annoying, and will not make everyone safe. But it could reduce gun deaths.
- Roxane Gay: Despite all our cultural obsession with civility, there is nothing more uncivilized than the political establishment’s acceptance of the constancy of mass shootings.
- Jay Caspian Kang: By sharing memes with each new tragedy, we’ve created a museum of unbearable grief, increasingly dense with names and photos of the dead.
“I ran down there thinking someone was hurt,” he said. Then he saw that the driver was carrying a rifle. “Her appearance matched the black clothes she was wearing,” Vargas said. He said he briefly shot at a nearby funeral home. “And then he turned to me and did two more rounds a short distance, but he also failed,” Vargas recalled.
“His face was blank. There was no expression,” he said. “It seemed like nothing mattered more than the mission he was on. He fired, ran, jumped a fence, and headed for school.”
An armed officer from the nearby Uvalde School District responded to reports that a driver involved in a crash had gotten out of his vehicle with a gun. The officer could not see anyone when he arrived, according to a state police officer, but then heard gunshots as the gunman started firing out the windows and entered the building. The officer did not open fire.
Investigators were still trying to recognize the gunman’s movements during the time he was out, before he entered the building. He went through an unlocked door at 11:40 a.m., Mr. He stepped up, and started firing inside. Police officers, including the school district officer, entered the school minutes later.
When officers reported that the gunman had been killed around 1 p.m., he had shot dead 19 students and two teachers, all of them apparently locked up with the gunman in the connected classrooms.
During that frightening time, more than an hour, the parents of students who were trapped in the school gathered outside the building when word of the shooting spread. Some were physically held by police in a scene that witnesses described as a mess close to chaos. The crowd grew to hundreds.
“Parents were crying and some were verbally fighting with the police and shouting that they wanted their children,” said Marcela Cabralez, a pastor.
Miguel Palacios, a small business owner, said his frantic parents were so upset that at one point they tried to tear down the school fence. “Parents were on one side of the fence, the Border Patrol and the police were on the other side of the fence, and they were trying to open it,” he said.
Updated
May 27, 2022 at 11:39 a.m. ET
Some of the parents begged the heavily armed police officers in the chaotic scene to assault the school. Others, including those who were off-duty members of law enforcement, went into it themselves to try to find their own children.
“There were a lot of gunmen who could have come in faster,” said Javier Cazares, 43, who arrived at the school on Tuesday when the attack took place. He said he could hear shots; her daughter, Jacklyn, was inside.
“They said they rushed and all that,” he said. “We didn’t see it.”
Jacklyn died in the shooting, along with her cousin. Mr. Cazares said he believed a faster police response would have made a difference. “In my opinion, more children would have been saved,” he said.
Chief Rodriguez said in a statement Thursday that officers from his department entered the school “just minutes” after the shooting began and that more than one of them had been shot by the gunman. The state police officer, who requested anonymity to describe the evolving chronology of events, said two UValde officers were shot when they initially tried to enter the classroom around 11:45 p.m. I have
At that moment, officials said, officers stepped back and began calling for help. “We have agents requesting additional resources,” Mr. Step. “Tactical equipment. We need equipment. We need special equipment. We need body armor. We need sniper rifles, negotiators. “
When officers fell, the gunman continued firing, the state police official said. It was during the first few minutes, police officials said, that most of the victims inside the room – a couple of whom officials said were connected classrooms – were shot.
But it was unclear how many of the children or teachers who died could have been saved if the gunman had been killed earlier.
And there were questions about the decision of the police instead of waiting for the arrival of specially trained Border Patrol officers to finally enter through the classroom door about an hour after the officers had withdrawn for first time. Police officials have said that with the gunman isolated in a classroom, local officers focused on evacuating students and staff from other classrooms to prevent further fatalities.
It was reported by police radio that the gunman had been shot dead by members of the tactical team around 1 p.m.
Although in the past the UValde police department has boasted of its SWAT team, these officers did not appear to be involved in trying to arrest the gunman.
The investigation into Tuesday’s shooting and police response was led by the Texas Rangers, a division of the Department of Homeland Security. The FBI was helping to collect and analyze surveillance videos to better understand what happened, according to a law enforcement official.
Law enforcement training for active shooters has evolved considerably since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, when the emphasis was on securing a perimeter and waiting for tactical equipment before moving. ‘hi.
Officers are now trained to deactivate an active shooter as soon as possible, before rescuing the victims and without waiting for a tactical or special team to arrive. This is true even if there are only two officers available, or one who is willing to enter alone, said Brian Higgins, a former SWAT team commander and chief of police who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. and runs a security consulting firm. .
Mr. Higgins stressed that much of what happened in the Uvalde shooting was unclear. “If the police came in more people would have been injured, they are in this Catch-22,” Mr. Higgins. “You don’t want anyone else to shoot.”
While the parents were watching, police officers could be seen helping to evacuate the children who were still inside.
“When they started breaking windows to get the kids out, I knew I was still in there alive, in there and shooting,” said Victor Luna, 40, who has a 9-year-old son at school. “It’s common sense: if they’d shot him, the kids could have come out the door.”
He believes police officers should have been willing to sacrifice their own lives to save children. “That’s what they pointed out,” he said.
Law enforcement officers described a chaotic scene and a large number of children who had to be evacuated.
Jacob Albarado, an off-duty Border Patrol officer, was about to sit down to cut his hair when he received a text message from his wife Trisha, a fourth-grade teacher at Robb Elementary.
“There is an active shooter,” he said in the message. “Help,” and then “I love you.”
Mr. Albarado flew out of the barber shop and went to school. His wife and the children he taught were hidden under the desks and …