Jim Vertuno and Elliot Spagat, The Associated Press Posted Friday, May 27, 2022 4:37 PM EDT Last Updated on Friday, May 27, 2022 11:11 PM EDT
UVALDE, Texas (AP) – Students trapped inside a classroom with a gunman repeatedly called 911 during this week’s attack on a Texas elementary school, including one asking, “Send the police now.” , while officers waited more than an hour to break it. the classroom after following the gunman into the building, authorities said Friday.
The commander of the scene in Uvalde – the school district police chief – believed that 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos was barricaded inside adjoining classrooms at Robb Primary School and that the children were no longer in risk, Steven McCraw, head of Texas. The Department of Public Safety said in a controversial press conference.
“It was a wrong decision,” he said.
Friday’s briefing came after authorities spent three days providing often contradictory and incomplete information about the more than an hour that elapsed between the time Ramos entered the school and when police officers entered the school. U.S. Border Patrol unlocked the classroom door and killed him.
Three police officers followed Ramos into the building in two minutes. In the next half hour, up to 19 officers crowded into the outer hallway. But it took another 47 minutes for the Border Patrol tactical team to close the door, McCraw said.
When the gunman shot at the students, law enforcement officers from other agencies urged the school’s police chief to let them in because the children were in danger, two police officials said.
Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been allowed to speak publicly about the investigation.
One official said the audio recordings of the scene captured officers from other agencies telling the school police chief that the shooter was still active and that the priority was to stop him.
Ramos killed 19 children and two teachers inside the classroom. The reason is unclear, authorities said.
There was a barrage of gunfire shortly after Ramos entered the classroom where officers killed him, but those shots were “sporadic” for much of the time officers waited in the hallway, McCraw said. He said investigators do not know if children died during that time.
During the attack, teachers and children repeatedly called 911 for help, including the girl who begged for police, McCraw said.
The young survivors of the attack said they pretended to be dead while waiting for help.
Miah Cerrillo, 11, told CNN she was covered in the blood of a friend for appearing dead. After the shooter moved into an adjoining room, he could hear screams, more gunfire, and music playing through the gunman. Samuel Salinas, 10, who was also killed, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the assailant shot Professor Irma Garcia before shooting the children.
Questions have been raised about how long it took officers to get into the school to confront the gunman.
It was 11:28 a.m. Tuesday when Ramos’ Ford truck crashed into a ditch behind Texas elementary school and the driver jumped with an AR-15 rifle. Five minutes later, authorities said, Ramos entered the school and found his way to the fourth-grade classroom where he killed the 21 victims.
But it wasn’t until 12:50 p.m. that police killed Ramos, McCraw said, when shots could be heard through a 911 call from a person inside the classroom as officers entered. in the room.
What happened during this time period, in a working-class neighborhood near the outskirts of Uvalde, has fueled public anger and scrutiny over the response of law enforcement to the commotion of Tuesday.
“They say they rushed in,” said Javier Cazares, whose fourth-grader daughter Jacklyn Cazares died in the attack, and who ran to the school while the massacre unfolded. “We didn’t see it.”
According to the new timeline provided by McCraw, after crashing his truck, Ramos shot at two people coming out of a nearby funeral home, officials said.
Contrary to previous statements by officials, a school district police officer was not at school when Ramos arrived. When the officer responded, unknowingly, he passed Ramos, who was crouched behind a car parked outside and fired at the building, McCraw said.
At 11:33 a.m., Ramos entered the school through a back door that had opened and fired more than 100 meats at a couple of classrooms, McCraw said. He did not explain why the door was open.
Two minutes later, three local police officers arrived and entered the building through the same door, followed shortly after by four others, McCraw said. Within 15 minutes, officers from various bodies had gathered in the hallway, catching sporadic fire from Ramos, which was locked in a classroom.
Ramos was still inside at 12:10 pm when the first deputies from the U.S. Marshals Service arrived. They had been running to school from nearly 70 miles (113 kilometers) away in the border town of Del Rio, the agency said in a tweet Friday.
But the commander inside the building, the school district police chief Pete Arredondo, decided the group would have to wait to confront the gunman, believing the scene was no longer a active attack, McCraw said.
The crisis ended at 12:50 p.m., after officers used a janitor’s keys to open the classroom door, entered the room, and shot dead Ramos, he said.
Arredondo could not be reached for comment on Friday. No one answered the door of his home, and he did not answer a phone message left at the district police headquarters.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who praised the police response at a news conference on Wednesday, said Friday that he was “deceived” and “livid.”
In his earlier statements, the governor told reporters, he was repeating what he had been told. “The information they gave me was, in part, inaccurate,” he said.
Abbott said what happened should be investigated “thoroughly and thoroughly.”
The governor previously praised law enforcement for his “incredible courage in running for gunfire” and his “quick response.”
On Friday, Abbott was scheduled to attend the National Rifle Association’s annual statewide convention in Houston. Instead, he addressed the gun rights convention through a recorded video and went to Uvalde.
At the convention, speaker after speaker took to the stage to say that changing U.S. gun laws or further restricting access to firearms is not the answer.
“What stops the bad guys is the good guys,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told Houston.
Former President Donald Trump was among the Republican leaders who spoke at the event, where hundreds of protesters angry at the armed violence demonstrated outside, including some holding crosses with photos of Uvalde’s victims.
The cause of the massacre – the deadliest school shooting in the country from Newtown, Connecticut, almost a decade ago – remained under investigation. Authorities said Ramos had no known criminal or mental health record.
During the siege, frustrated spectators urged police officers to charge at the school, according to witnesses.
“Come in! Get in! “The women called the officers shortly after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24, who saw the scene from outside a house across the street.
Cazares said when he arrived he saw two officers outside the school and about five more listening to students outside the building. But it took 15 or 20 minutes before officers arrived with shields, equipped to face the gunman, he said.
As more parents went to school, he and others pressured police to act, Cazares said. He heard about four shots before he and the others were ordered back into a parking lot.
“Many of us were arguing with the police,‘ You all have to go. You all have to do your job. His response was, “We can’t do our job because you’re interfering,” Cazares said.
The many creepy details of the attack were enough to leave the parents struggling with fear.
Visiting a city center monument to the murders, Kassandra Johnson of the nearby Hondo community said she was so worried the day after the attack that she kept her twins at home from school.
Before sending the 8-year-olds, he studied the school building, figuring out which windows he would have to break to get there. And he drew their hearts in his hands with a marker so he could identify them if the worst happened, Johnson said, as he laid flowers near 21 white crosses in honor of the victims.
“These kids could be mine,” he said.
Associated Press reporters Claire Galofaro in Uvalde, Jake Bleiberg in Dallas and Mike Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.