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Outside of Robb Elementary School, a senior Texas police officer revealed how, days earlier, as many as 19 police officers had waited 48 minutes to act as a gunman surrounded by a classroom.
From within, desperate children and teachers repeatedly called 911 for help, he revealed.
“Obviously, according to the information we have, there were children in that classroom who were still at risk,” said Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Homeland Security.
“From the benefit of the retrospective, where I’m sitting now, of course, it wasn’t the right decision. It was the wrong decision. Point.”
Officers stayed in the hallway for nearly an hour before using a master key to open a door to confront the armed teenager inside, McCraw said.
By then, it was too late: 19 students and two teachers had been killed.
Police have provided conflicting reports on how the shocking attack on a UValde primary school took place around noon on Tuesday, local time.
What is clear is that the 18-year-old gunman intended to end his life, although his final motive is unknown.
This is what we know so far.
The last 90 minutes of the gunman
At 11:28 a.m., the gunman’s truck crashed into a ditch behind the school building and the driver jumped with an AR-15 rifle.
According to authorities, 12 minutes later he entered the hallways of Robb Elementary School and found his way to a classroom, where he opened fire.
But it wasn’t until 12:58, about 90 minutes later, that the police radio talk said the gunman had been killed and the siege was over.
An improvised monument has been created in honor of the 19 students and two teachers killed at Robb Elementary School. (ABC News: Cameron Schwarz)
What happened at that time, in a working-class neighborhood near the city, has fueled public outrage over the police response.
“They say they rushed in,” said Javier Cazares, whose daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed while he and several parents who went to the scene were left helpless.
“We didn’t see it.”
On Friday afternoon, McCraw told reporters that the on-site commander had believed the gunman was barricaded in a classroom and that the students were safe.
“I was convinced at the time that there was no more threat to the children and that the issue was barricaded and that they had time to organize,” he said.
“Of course it wasn’t the right decision. It was the wrong decision.”
The children called 911 for help
U.S. Border Patrol officers eventually used a master key to open the locked classroom door where they clashed and killed the gunman, who had then shot dead 19 students and two teachers, according to McCraw.
He said there was a bombing shortly after officers entered the classroom where the gunman was killed, but that it had been “sporadic” for much of the 48 minutes as they waited outside in the hallway.
Researchers have not yet established whether or how many children died while stagnant.
During the attack, teachers and children repeatedly called 911 for help, including a girl who begged, “Please send the police now,” McCraw said.
According to CNN, an 11-year-old survivor of the attack died for nearly an hour after smearing her body with the blood of a friend.
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The boy told CNN, off-camera, that the gunman had supported a teacher in the classroom, started firing and then entered the adjoining classroom.
Questions grow because of the slow police response
The updated chronology of the attack came after authorities pressed on why officers had not stopped the gunman before.
On Thursday, Victor Escalon, the regional director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told reporters that he had “taken all these questions into account,” but that he was not prepared to answer them.
Instead of clarifying Tuesday’s events, more troubling questions were asked about how long it took police to get to the scene and confront the gunman, and the apparent failure to close the school door. through which the gunman had entered.
After two days of providing conflicting information, investigators said a school district police officer was not inside the school when the gunman arrived and, contrary to previous reports, had not confronted him. to him outside the building.
The city of Uvalde is in mourning after the worst school shooting in the United States in almost 10 years. (ABC News: Cameron Schwarz)
Instead, they outlined a timeline full of unexplained delays by law enforcement.
After crashing his truck, the gunman shot at two people coming out of a nearby funeral home, Escalon said, before entering the school “unobstructed” through a seemingly unlocked door.
However, the first police officers did not arrive at the scene until 12 minutes after the accident and did not enter the school until four minutes later.
Inside, they were expelled by gunfire and took refuge, Escalon said.
The gunman was still inside at 12:10 a.m. when the first U.S. Marshals Service deputies arrived.
They had run to school from nearly 113 kilometers away in the border town of Del Rio, according to an agency tweet.
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The crisis ended when a group of Border Patrol tactical officers entered the school at 12:45 p.m., a Texas Department of Homeland Security spokesman said.
They took part in a shootout with the gunman and moments before 1pm he was dead.
Escalon said officers had called for support, negotiators and tactical equipment as they evacuated students and teachers.
Witnesses, families urged police to act
The motive for the massacre, the deadliest school shooting in the country since the Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut, has been under investigation for nearly a decade, and authorities say the UVald gunman had no history of mental health or known offenses.
During the siege, frustrated spectators urged police officers to charge at the school, according to witnesses.
“Come in! Come in!” the women called the officers shortly after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, who watched the scene from outside a house across the street.
Carranza said officers should have entered the school earlier.
“There were more. There was only one,” he said.
The head of the Border Patrol, Raúl Ortiz, did not give a timetable but said repeatedly that the tactical agents of his agency who arrived at the school did not hesitate.
He said they moved quickly to enter the building, lining up in a “pile” behind an officer holding a shield.
“What we wanted to make sure of was to act quickly, to act quickly, and that’s exactly what these agents did,” Ortiz told Fox News.
Mr Cazares said he saw two officers outside the school and about five others listening to students outside the building.
However, it took 15 or 20 minutes before he saw officers arrive with shields, equipped to face the gunman, he said.
As more parents went to school, he and others pressured the police to act, but they were ordered back to a parking lot.
“Many of us were arguing with the police,‘ You all have to get in there. You all have to do your job. “His response was,” We can’t do our job because you’re interfering, “Cazares said.
The grieving community is asking for answers
Doug Swimmer, pastor of The Potter’s House, a local church, said the tragedy had turned the city upside down, with several members of his congregation losing children.
“They want answers. They want to know why,” he told ABC.
“And my fear is that when the information comes out, it won’t be what this community wanted to hear.”
After the press conference of Mr. McCraw, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, spoke out at first, avoiding questions about temporary law enforcement changes.
Abbott said he had shared information given to him by authorities earlier in the week and was “lively” because it turned out to be “partly inaccurate”.
“I was wrong,” he said. “I’m furious about what happened.”
He said he would ask for answers for “families whose lives have been destroyed.”
ABC / children
Posted 4 hours, 4 hours ago, Friday, May 27, 2022 at 11:27 PM, last updated 2 hours, 2 hours ago, Saturday, May 28, 2022 at 12:36 AM