UVALDE, Texas (AP) – The state agency investigating the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde has determined that the commander, who was facing criticism for his slow police response, was not carrying a radio while the massacre took place. , a Texas state senator said Friday.
Senator Roland Gutierrez told The Associated Press in a brief telephone interview that a Texas Department of Public Safety official told him that the school district police chief Pete Arredondo was without radio during the 24 May by a lone gunman at Robb Elementary School who left 19 students. and two dead teachers. Seventeen others were injured.
Authorities did not say how Arredondo was communicating with other police officers at the scene, including more than a dozen officers who were once waiting outside the classroom where the gunman was hiding. Arredondo heads the small district department and was in charge of the multi-agency response to the shooting.
He has not responded to several requests for AP interviews since the attack, including a phone message left Friday to district police.
The seemingly missing radio is the last detail to highlight concerns about how the police handled the shooting and why they did not confront the gunman more quickly, even when anxious parents outside the school left. urge agents to enter. The Justice Department has said it will review law enforcement response.
The focus has been on the head in recent days after Steven McCraw, head of the Texas Department of Homeland Security, said Arredondo believed the active shooting had become a hostage situation and that he took the “wrong decision” not to order officers to break into the classroom faster to confront the gunman.
Gutierrez, representing Uvalde, complained Thursday that Arredondo was not informed of the terrified 911 calls from students trapped inside a classroom where the gunman had been hiding. The Democrat called it a “system failure.”
Police radios are a crucial source of real-time communication during an emergency and, according to experts, often how information from 911 calls is transmitted to field officers. It is unclear at the scene who was aware of the calls. Uvalde police did not answer questions about the calls on Thursday.
The news came amid tensions between state and local authorities over how police handled the shooting and communicated what happened to the public.
Uvalde’s gunman, Salvador Ramos, 18, spent about 80 minutes inside the school, and more than an hour has passed since the first officers followed him into the building and when he was killed by law enforcement, according to an official. chronology.
Ramos entered through an open door into the adjoining fourth-grade classrooms at 11:33 a.m., authorities said. He quickly fired over 100 rounds.
Officers entered minutes later, exchanging Ramos fire, and by 12:03 p.m., there were up to 19 officers in the hallway outside the classroom, McCraw said. Authorities have not said where Arredondo was during this period.
A U.S. Border Patrol tactical team used the key of a school employee to open the classroom door and kill the gunman around 12:50 p.m., McCraw said.
Since the shooting, law enforcement and state officials have struggled to present an accurate timeline and details of the event and how police responded, sometimes providing conflicting information or withdrawing statements hours later. State police have said some stories were preliminary and may change as more witnesses are interviewed.
Gutierrez said Friday that a Texas Department of Homeland Security official told him that Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee had ordered the agency not to disclose further information about the shooting investigation to the senator or public.
The Department of Homeland Security sent all questions about the shooting investigation to Busbee on Friday, who did not immediately return phone and text messages for comment.
Gutierrez said Thursday that many people should take some blame for the shooting in Uvalde, including the governor of Texas.
“There was error at every level, including the legislature. Greg Abbott is very much to blame for all this,” he said.
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Learn more about school shooting in Uvalde, Texas: https://apnews.com/hub/uvalde-school-shooting
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Coronado reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writers Jake Bleiberg in Dallas and Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.