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UVALDE, Tex. – After entering Robb Elementary through an open side entrance, 18-year-old Salvador Rolando Ramos burst into adjoining classrooms and informed terrified fourth-graders that it was “time to die.”
“Good night,” Ramos said, before shooting and killing a teacher.
The students were as follows, according to witnesses. The kids who had been watching “Lilo & Stitch” fought for hiding places. The hot shrapnel burned the elegant dresses some had worn for an awards ceremony on the morning of May 24th. A girl was smeared with the blood of a classmate and killed.
According to witnesses, the attack lasted so long that the gunman had time to make fun of his victims before killing them, even putting on songs that a student described on CNN as ” I want music for people to die for. ” As the minutes passed, more and more desperate students called 911.
At 12:03 p.m., a girl called 911 for just over a minute and whispered that she was in room 112, according to Texas Department of Homeland Security director Steven C. McCraw. He called back at 12:10 pm reporting several dead, he said, and a few minutes later, to say there were still a number of students alive.
“Please send the police now,” the girl pleaded with the dispatcher at 12:43, 40 minutes after her first call.
It would be longer before authorities finally entered and killed Ramos shortly before 1 p.m. By then, the gunman had turned a sleepy afternoon at the end of the school year into a 90-minute massacre, a prolonged attack worsened by the failure of security measures. and a catastrophically slow response from authorities in this South Texas city.
A total of 19 children and two teachers were killed and 17 others were injured, a devastating cost to a small, heavily woven, largely Hispanic community where relatives were usually in the same class at school. ‘school. In the days that followed, local disaffection turned to rage as Texas officials spoke of police courage, ignoring law enforcement errors that took days to recognize.
Timeline: How Police Responded to the Texas School Shooter
Only now is a more reliable timeline emerging through official statements, 911 records, social media posts, and interviews with survivors and witnesses. The revelations tell a story of institutional failure at the expense of unprotected children. Here in Uvalde, there are few expectations that correcting the record will lead to a real policy change, especially with the approaching hyperparty midterm elections.
“I mean, there are protests over gun and stuff laws, background checks, but it’s not going anywhere,” said Angel Flores, 17, speaking at a San Antonio hospital where he was visiting two relatives who were taken there. after receiving a shot. Uvalde.
“What happened to Sandy Hook 10 years ago?” said Angel’s father, David Flores, 37, referring to the 2012 mass shooting at a primary school in Newtown, Connecticut. “It’s the same, back on the road. Nothing changes.”
On Tuesday morning, Dora and Bob Estrada set out to see their favorite day soap, “The Bold and the Beautiful.”
As she waited for her show to begin, Dora heard two loud sounds in the direction of Robb Elementary across the street. She told her husband she thought it was a shot.
“She said, ‘No, that can’t be,'” Dora recalled. “I said, ‘No, these are shots.'”
Dora cared about her grandson, Jayden, a high school student in Robb. Shortly afterwards, his daughter, Jayden’s mother, called to warn her parents to lock the door; had heard of an active shooter threat. The Estradas decided to go out to see the school and noticed “a bunch of cops around the corner.”
“They were just there,” Dora said.
Given the time period, the first pops Dora heard probably came from the first shots Ramos fired as soon as she arrived at school at 11:28 a.m., addressing the people on the street who they heard his truck crash into a ditch and they were on their way home. help. Minutes earlier he had shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face at his nearby home, grabbed his vehicle and drove a short distance to Robb Elementary. Grandma survived and called 911; Authorities did not disclose the exact time or content of his 911 call.
New details have blurred previous accounts of a clash between the gunman and an out-of-school gunman, a story that authorities changed four times. First, officials said the gunman exchanged fire with the officer outside the school before entering. McCraw later said there was an encounter, but no shots were exchanged between the two. On Thursday, officials said there had been no clashes and the gunman had simply entered. On Friday, McCraw added that the school’s police officer was not on campus, but rushed after a 911 call about a man with a gun on campus. shock.
“He was driving right next to the suspect,” who was crouched behind a vehicle in the parking lot and mistaken a teacher for an intruder, McCraw said.
Ramos entered the school at 11:33 a.m. through a back door that should have been locked but had been opened, authorities said. The shooter walked to the back of the building, turned around in a lobby and began firing in classrooms 111 and 112, authorities said, unloading more than 100 rounds of ammunition in those early moments.
With the sound of gunfire, children and staff from other parts of the building began to leave the school, some heading to safety at a nearby funeral home. Others did not have time to run.
In classroom 109, teacher Elsa Ávila rushed to close the door and turn off the lights. He told his students to hide under their desks, he remembered a 9-year-old survivor, Daniel, whose mother asked that their last name not be used.
Daniel saw Ramos approach the window of his classroom door and shoot through the glass, hitting Avila and another student a few feet away from him. Daniel said he and others were “killing the dead” inside the classroom because they were afraid he might see them.
Bullets ransacked the classroom, with a fragment hitting a fellow student’s nose. Daniel remembered a “crunch” sound when he hit the bone. Obstructed by the closed door, Ramos went back down the hall, returning to classrooms 111 and 112, the adjoining classrooms.
McCraw said three officers from the Uvalde police department were the first officers at the school and that two were injured by scratches at the time by Ramos.
McCraw said Ramos had locked the doors to rooms 111 and 112, but went back out into the lobby briefly. be shot, before closing again in adjoining classrooms. .
Shots were heard at 11:37, 11:38, 11:40 and 11:44, McCraw said.
Four other local officers, from the police department and the county sheriff’s office, arrived, McCraw said at a time he did not say.
None of the officers attempted to enter Rooms 111 and 112 and attack the gunman, officials said.
A small school police force from Uvalde took charge, and then did not enter
At least 12:15 p.m., McCraw said “up to 19” police officers had converged on the school corridor, including members of the Border Patrol tactical team who arrived with shields.
“There were a lot of officers to do what needed to be done,” McCraw said. But the incident commander believed more equipment and people were needed for a “breach,” McCraw said, adding that there was a sense that law enforcement “had time” and saw “no child at risk “.
At about the same time, the 112 student in the classroom called again. He said eight or nine students were alive. Three minutes later, at 12:19 p.m., a student in Room 111 called 911 but hung up at the request of another student, McCraw said. At 12:21 p.m., he said, three shots could be heard on the 911 line.
When the attack was underway, the frantic parents began presenting themselves to Robb after receiving active shooter alerts. The scene outside the police cordon was strained as families asked why officers were not entering the building to save their children. The video shows bewildered families walking around, tightening the cordon, cursing the officers.
The live video on May 24 shows families outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, frustrated with police and trying to break into the building. (Video: Anonymous via Storyful)
Dany Reyz, 51, learned of the shootings at his half-mile repair shop in Robb, where his grandson and six nieces are registered. He immediately approached and arrived around 11:40 a.m., according to phone records detailing the frantic calls he was making while looking for a place to park.
When he arrived at the scene, Reyz said, more than a dozen parents were already crowded near the school entrance, demanding that officers do more to intervene. On the east side of the building, he said, another group of parents tried to push a fence to enter the school, but were repulsed by police.
Félix Rubio, 39, a relative of Reyz, overheard angry parents telling officers “you’re going to do your shit.” When authorities insisted they were doing their job, Rubio said, a man shouted at them, “Grab your shitty rifle and do business.”
Distressed parents could do nothing but wait, trusting that the authorities were doing everything possible to protect the students.
“There are six-year-olds in there,” one man lamented in a video made outside of school that day. “They don’t know how to defend themselves from a shooter.”
When the authorities declared the attack over, shortly after 1 p.m., the Estradas had found their grandson’s master and knew he was safe. Reyz’s grandson and nephews also left, but a niece, 9-year-old Eliana Garcia, was shot dead.
Some parents only found out that their children were dead hours later, at a …