UVALDE, Texas (AP) – The commander at the scene of a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, was not informed of the 911 calls in panic from students trapped inside the building while the massacre unfolded, a Texas state senator said Thursday.
Senator Roland Gutierrez said requests for help from Robb Elementary School people on May 24 did not reach the school district police chief Pete Arredondo. The Democratic senator described as “system failure” that the calls went to the city police but were not communicated to Arredondo.
“I want to know specifically who was receiving the 911 calls,” Gutierrez told a news conference, adding that no one or entity was entirely to blame for the massacre.
However, he said, Governor Greg Abbot would have to accept much of the responsibility for mistakes in the police response.
“There was error at all levels, including the legislature. Greg Abbott is very much to blame for all this,” Gutierrez said.
Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the attack on Robb Elementary School, the deadliest shooting at the school in nearly a decade. Seventeen others were injured. Funerals for the murders have begun this week.
The 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 assassinated by law enforcement.
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 some statements hours later. State police have said some stories were preliminary and may change as more witnesses are interviewed.
Much of the focus was on Arredondo. Steven McCraw, head of the Texas Department of Homeland Security, said Arredondo believed the situation had become a hostage situation and made the “wrong decision” not to order officers to try to enter the classroom while making 911 calls outside.
Gutierrez said it was unclear if any details of the 911 calls were being shared with law enforcement officers from various local agencies.
“Uvalde PD was the one who received the 911 calls for 45 minutes while officers were sitting in a hallway, while 19 officers were sitting in a hallway for 45 minutes,” Gutierrez said. “We don’t know if these people were being communicated or not.”
But, the senator said, the State Emergency Communications Commission told him the school district police chief did not know.
“He is the commander of the incident. He did not receive (the) calls to 911,” Gutierrez said.
Uvalde police chief Daniel Rodriguez did not respond to a phone call from The Associated Press on Thursday asking for comments.
Police communications were also a problem in 2019 when a gunman shot and killed seven people and injured more than two dozen during a shooting in Odessa, Texas. Authorities said Seth Aaron Ator, 36, called 911 before and after the shootings, but a failure to communicate between the agencies – not all of which operated on the same radio channel – slowed the response. Ator was able to walk about 10 miles before officers shot and killed him.
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Learn more about school shooting in Uvalde, Texas: https://apnews.com/hub/uvalde-school-shooting
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Blebierg reported from Dallas.