The children run to a safe place after escaping through a window during a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas on May 24th. Pete Luna / Uvalde Leader-News / Reuters
Police stayed outside the closed classrooms for more than an hour at Robb Elementary School while dozens of students were trapped inside with a school shooter, though some of these children made 911 calls whispering, asking for help.
The minute-by-minute breakdown of the police response was provided for the first time at a news conference Friday in front of the school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed Tuesday in the third deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.
Earlier this week, video footage circulated online showed frantic parents outside the school during the shooting, asking police to enter it and, in some cases, asking to be allowed inside.
Texas Department of Homeland Security director Steven McCraw told a news conference that the officer in charge of the scene during the shooting, whom he identified as the head of the Consolidated School District Police Department ‘Uvalde, Pete Arradondo, told officers who initially responded that they should wait earlier. moving.
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“The commander at the scene at the time believed that he had gone from being an active shooter [situation] to a barricaded issue: that there was time and that there were no more children at risk, “Colonel McCraw told reporters.
“From the benefit of the retrospective … of course, it wasn’t the right decision,” he said. “It was a wrong decision, period. There is no excuse for that.”
The shooting began on Tuesday morning when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos shot his grandmother in the face and took off in his van, carrying a rifle and a bag of ammunition. He crashed his truck not far from the school and fired at two people as they approached the scene.
Although there were calls to 911 about an accident and a man with a gun, he had already arrived at the school parking lot when police responded and he was “together” behind a car, he said. Colonel McCraw. A police cruiser passed in front of him.
Colonel McCraw said the gunman arrived at the site at 11:31 a.m. and began firing at the building from outside.
He entered the school at 11:33 a.m. through a door that had been left open by a teacher who had run inside to grab something. He turned down a hallway and almost immediately started firing at two adjoining classrooms, 111 and 112. Colonel McCraw said audio evidence showed he fired more than 100 meats.
Local police officers broke into the school through the same door a few minutes later, at 11:35 am. They were immediately shot at, Colonel McCraw said, and two of them were shot. They withdrew and asked for support. The shootings continued.
Media members take pictures of a map of the school. Wong Maye-E / The Associated Press
Backups began arriving at 11:51 a.m. and at 12:03 p.m., there were up to 19 officers lined up in the school hallway outside the classrooms, which the gunman had closed. But they did not have the tactical equipment that the commander thought they needed to move. At the same time, Colonel McCraw said, a student made a 911 call from Room 112. He called again a few minutes later and reported that several of his classmates were dead.
At 12.15 pm a SWAT Border Patrol team arrived at the scene, equipped with shields. However, the agents did not move. At 12:16 p.m., the student called 911 again and reported that there were still eight or nine students alive in the room. They received several more calls to 911, including one from another student, although there were more shots. At 12:47 p.m., the initial student was still asking the 911 dispatcher to send the police, adding that he could hear the officers next door.
It was 12.50pm when police finally entered the classrooms with the keys they had obtained from a school janitor and killed the gunman. When asked if any children were shot while police were waiting for support, Colonel McCraw said he could not say. He said the two students who made 911 calls survived.
Colonel McCraw did not answer questions about whether the information from the 911 call was being transmitted to the commander at the scene. His voice cracked as he acknowledged the police mistakes.
“There were a lot of agents to do what needed to be done,” he said.
Jennifer Gaitan, who lives three blocks from the school and has a fourth-grader daughter there, was one of the first parents to arrive that day, after she saw police coming into the building. The parents asked the officers to intervene.
An officer, he said, pushed her back with his assault rifle and then twisted her arm behind her back. His twisted arm was broken in a car accident, he said. She released her when her husband pushed her away.
Victims of Robb Elementary school mass, top row from left: Teacher Eva Mireles, Eliahana Cruz Torres, Makenna Lee Elrod, Jose Flores, Miranda Mathis, Maite Rodriguez, Teacher Irma Garcia, Second row: Nevaeh Bravo, Alithia Rami Uziyah Garcia, Ameri Jo Garza, Annabell Rodriguez, Jackie Cazares, Bottom row: Jayce Carmelo Luevanos, Jailah Silguero, Rojelio Torres, Xavier Lopez, Tess Mata, Alexandria Aniyah Rubio and Ellie García.Reuters
The video of the scene that Ms. Gaitan shared with The Globe and Mail shows a chaotic melee, in which police surround and try to contain a man trying to get to school. Eventually, police threw the man to the ground and held him. Ms Gaitan said some officers took out tasers.
He said he could not believe that the police presented themselves as heroic immediately after the shooting. “They’ve taken too long,” he said.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who had praised police earlier in the week, said he had not been told the whole truth about his response.
“It simply came to our notice then. I’m furious about what happened, “he told reporters Friday. He added that he hopes law enforcement leaders, including the Texas Rangers and the FBI, “.
On Friday, the same day as the police press conference, the National Rifle Association opened its annual meeting three hours later in Houston, with former President Donald Trump about to address the crowd. Thousands of protesters gathered in a park in front of the city’s convention center and pressed on police barricades to warn attendees to successfully press for stricter gun control.
Kelly Walters and Timi Walters took their three-year-old daughter to the protest, with a handmade sign saying “Am I Next?”
Ms Walters, a 39-year-old therapist and former teacher, said her daughter had already been confined when there was an active shooter across the street from her church daycare. The couple’s 19-year-old son, he said, has gone through 10 school closures over the years.
Addressing the convention, former President Donald Trump argued that the solution to the mass shootings is to ensure that people can get more weapons. “The existence of evil is one of the best reasons to arm law-abiding citizens,” he said.
Mr. Ramos legally bought two AR-15-style rifles and huge amounts of ammunition in the days before the massacre. On Friday, police described the size of his arsenal.
They found a total of 58 magazines in and around the school. There were two more in his house. In addition to his rifle, “Mr. Ramos had bought and had a total of 1,657 rounds of ammunition, “said Colonel McCraw.
There were 142 spent cartridges of Mr. Ramos’ pistols inside the school, 22 more cartridges outside the school and 22 in place of his crashed truck.
Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, says police made the wrong decision.
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