AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Police had enough officers at the scene of the Uvalde school massacre to have arrested the gunman three minutes after entering the building, the chief said on Tuesday. of Texas Public Safety, which stated that the police response was an “abject failure.” . ”
Police officers with rifles stood and waited for more than an hour as the gunman carried out the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
Colonel Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, testified at a state Senate hearing on police handling of the tragedy. Law enforcement response delays have become the focus of federal, state and local investigations.
“Obviously, not enough training was done in this situation, simple and straightforward. Because the commander on the ground made terrible decisions, “McCraw said of Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief.
Eight minutes after the shooter entered the building, an officer reported that police had a “hooligan” lever that they could use to break down the classroom door, McCraw said. Nineteen minutes after the gunman entered, police inserted the first ballistic shield into the building, the witness testified.
McCraw told the Senate committee that Arredondo decided to put the officers’ lives ahead of the children’s lives.
The head of public safety began describing to the committee a number of missed opportunities, disruptions in communication and other mistakes:
– Arredondo had no radio with him.
– The police and sheriff’s radios did not work inside the school; inside the school, only the radios of the Border Patrol officers at the scene were working, and they didn’t even work perfectly.
– Some school schemes that the police used to coordinate their response were wrong.
– The classroom door could not be closed from the inside.
State police initially said the gunman entered the school through an outside door that had been opened by a teacher, but McGraw said the teacher had closed the door and could only be locked from the outside.
“There’s no way he knows the door is locked,” McGraw said. “It happened directly.”
Questions about the response of law enforcement began days after the massacre. McCraw said three days after the shooting that Arredondo made “the wrong decision” when he decided not to assault the classroom for more than 70 minutes, even though fourth-graders trapped inside two classrooms were desperately calling 911 to ask. help and distressed parents from outside the school called for help. agents to get into it.
Arredondo later said he was not considered responsible and assumed that someone else had taken control of the law enforcement response. Arredondo has denied repeated requests for comment to The Associated Press.
The 18-year-old gunman used an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle.
In the days and weeks following the shooting, authorities gave contradictory and incorrect accounts in the days following what happened, sometimes withdrawing statements hours after making them.
“Everything I’ve witnessed today is corroborated,” McCraw told lawmakers.
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Bleiberg and Associated Press writer Jamie Stengle contributed to this report from Dallas.
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Find more AP coverage of the Uvalde school shooting: