Frustrated spectators had urged police officers to charge at Texas Elementary School, where the attack by a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers, witnesses said.
Key points:
- The father of one of the dead children, Javier Cazares, said police were “unprepared” and “doing nothing.”
- Authorities say police involved the shooter “immediately”
- A law enforcement official said Border Patrol officers needed a staff member to open a classroom door with a key.
Investigators continued to work to trace the massacre that lasted more than 40 minutes and ended when the 18-year-old shooter was killed by a Border Patrol team.
“Come in! Come in!” Nearby women called officers shortly after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24.
Mr. Carranza witnessed the scene from outside his home, across the street from Robb Elementary School in the close-knit town of Uvalde.
He said officers did not enter.
Javier Cazares, whose fourth daughter Jacklyn Cazares, 9, died in the attack, said she ran to the school when she learned of the shooting and arrived while police were still concentrated outside the buildings.
Disgusted that the police would not move, he raised the idea of entering the school with several other spectators.
“We are in a hurry because the police are not doing anything as they are supposed to do,” he said.
“More could have been done.”
“They were not ready,” he added.
There were 19 students and two teachers killed. (Reuters: Marco Bello)
Minutes earlier, Carranza had seen the gunman smash his truck into a ditch outside the school, grab his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and shoot two people outside a nearby funeral home who fled unharmed. .
Officials say he “stumbled” on a school district security officer outside the school, although there were conflicting reports from authorities about whether the men exchanged gunfire.
After running inside, he shot and injured two Uvalde police officers who were outside the building, Texas Department of Homeland Security spokesman Travis Considine said.
After entering the school, the gunman charged against a classroom and started killing.
“He barricaded himself by closing the door and started firing on children and teachers who were inside that classroom,” Lt. Christopher Olivarez of the Department of Public Safety told CNN.
All the killers were in the same classroom, he said.
Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told reporters it had been 40 minutes to an hour since the gunman opened fire on the school’s security officer until the tactical team he fired.
Authorities say police immediately engaged the shooter. (AP: William Luther / The San Antonio Express-News)
However, a department spokesman later said they could not give a solid estimate of how long the gunman was at school or when he was killed.
“The bottom line is that there was law enforcement,” McCraw said.
“They got involved immediately. They contained him in the classroom.”
Meanwhile, a police official familiar with the investigation said Border Patrol officers had trouble breaking down the classroom door and had to have a staff member open the room with a key.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation.
Carranza said officers should have entered the school earlier.
“There were more. There was only one,” he said.
The neighbor called 911 after Grandma shot
Uvalde is a predominantly Latin city of about 16,000 people about 120 miles from the border with Mexico.
Robb Elementary, which has about 600 second-, third-, and fourth-grade students, is a one-story brick structure in a predominantly residential neighborhood of modest homes.
Before attacking the school, the gunman shot and wounded his grandmother in the house they shared, authorities said.
Neighbor Gilbert Gallegos, 82, who lives across the street and has known the family for decades, said he was in his yard when he heard the shots.
The gunman ran out the front door and crossed the small courtyard to the truck parked in front of the house.
He seemed to be panicking, Mr. Gallegos said, and was having trouble getting the truck out of the park.
Then he ran away. “It came out, I mean fast,” sprinkling gravel into the air, Gallegos said.
Her grandmother came out covered in blood: “She says, ‘Berto, that’s what she did. She shot me.'” She was admitted to the hospital.
Gallegos, whose wife called 911, said he had not heard any discussion before or after the shootings, and that he knew of no history of harassment or abuse against the gunman, which he rarely saw.
Authorities said the shooter had no history of mental health problems. (AP: Dario Lopez-Mills)
Investigators also failed to shed light on the gunman’s cell phone.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the Ugalde resident, about 135 miles west of San Antonio, had no known criminal or mental health record.
“We don’t see any motive or catalyst right now,” McCraw of the Department of Homeland Security said.
He legally bought the rifle and a second one like this last week, just after his birthday, authorities said.
About half an hour before the mass shooting, he sent the first of three messages online warning of his plans, Abbott said.
He wrote that he would shoot his grandmother, after he had shot the woman.
On the last note, sent about 15 minutes before arriving at Robb Elementary, he said he was going to shoot an elementary school, according to Mr Abbott.
Investigators said the messages did not specify which school.
One-on-one private text messages were sent via Facebook, company spokesman Andy Stone said.
The pain engulfed Uvalde as the details emerged
Among the dead were Eliahna Garcia, an 10-year-old extroverted girl who enjoyed singing, dancing and playing basketball, her fourth-grader Xavier Javier López, who was looking forward to a summer of swimming, and teacher Eva Mireles, whose husband is an officer in the school district police department.
“You can tell with his angelic smiles that they were loved,” said Uvalde Superintendent of Schools Hal Harrell, struggling with tears as he remembered the murdered children and teachers.
The tragedy is the latest in a seemingly endless wave of mass shootings in the United States in recent years.
Just 10 days earlier, 10 black people were shot dead in a racist attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
The Uvalde bombing was the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.
Amid calls for stricter gun restrictions, the Republican governor has repeatedly spoken out about the mental health struggles among Texas youth and argued that the toughest gun laws in Chicago, New York and California were ineffective.
Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is running for governor against Abbott, interrupted Wednesday’s press conference, calling the tragedy “predictable.”
Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to search, up and down arrows for volume. Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke interrupted Governor Greg Abbott’s press conference on the mass shooting.
Pointing to Mr Abbott, he said, “It’s up to you until you decide to do something different. This will keep happening.”
Mr. O’Rourke was escorted outside while some in the room called him. Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin called Mr O’Rourke a “sick son of a bitch”.
Texas has some of the most pro-gun laws in the United States and has been the site of some of the deadliest shootings in the United States in five years.
“I don’t know how people can sell this kind of weapon to an 18-year-old boy,” said Syria’s Arizmendi, the victim’s aunt Eliahna Garcia, angry in tears.
“What will he use it for but this purpose?”
U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday that “the second amendment is not absolute” and called for new arms restrictions following the massacre.
But the prospects for reform of national weapons regulations seemed weak. Repeated attempts over the years to expand background checks and enact other brakes have met with Republican opposition in Congress.
Read more about the Texas school shooting:
The shooting came days before the annual National Rifle Association convention in Houston began, with the intervention of the governor of Texas and the two U.S. Republican senators in the state.
‘Why did they do this to us?’
The children in a classroom were watching Moana when the shooter arrived at the school. (Reuters: Marco Bello)
Dillon Silva, whose nephew was in the classroom, said students were watching the Disney movie Moana when they heard several loud bangs and a bullet shattered a window.
Moments later, his teacher saw the assailant pass by.
“Oh my God, he has a gun!” the teacher called twice, according to Silva. “The teacher didn’t even have time to close the door,” he said.
The united community, built around a shady central square, includes many families who have lived there for generations.
Lorena Auguste was a substitute teacher at Uvalde High School when she learned of the shooting and began sending frantic text messages to her niece, a fourth-grader at Robb.
He finally found out that the girl was fine.
But that night, his niece had a question.
“Why did they do this to us?” the girl asked.
“We’re good kids. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
AP / ABC
Posted 3 hours ago 3 hours ago Thu, May 26, 2022 at 4:56 AM, updated 7 m ago, 7 minutes ago, Thu, May 26, 2022 at 8:18 AM