© Reuters. A general display of the memorial on Town Square in front of the county courthouse for victims of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, USA on May 27, 2022. Picture taken with a drone. REUTERS / Marco Bello
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By Brad Brooks and Gabriella Borter
UVALDE, Texas (Reuters) – Investigators in Texas on Saturday sought to determine how critical mistakes were made in the response to the deadly Uvalde shooting, including why nearly 20 police officers remained outside a classroom in an elementary school while children were placed in panic 911 calls for help.
Why officers waited in the hallway nearly an hour before entering and fatally shot the gunman is at the heart of an ongoing investigation by the Texas Department of Public Safety into the massacre of 19 children and two teachers in the deadliest U.S. school shooting in nearly a year. decade.
Investigators are also still looking for a motive for the attack. Salvador Ramos, who dropped out of high school, had no criminal record and no history of mental illness.
At least two children called 911 from a pair of adjoining fourth-grade classrooms after 18-year-old Ramos stepped in on Tuesday with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, said Colonel Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. earlier this week.
“He’s in room 112,” a girl whispered on the phone at 12:03 p.m., more than 45 minutes before a tactical team led by U.S. Border Patrol stormed in at 12:51 p.m. and ended the siege at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, a town of 16,000 people west of San Antonio.
The same girl had asked the 911 operator to “please send the police now” at 12.43 and again four minutes later.
The commander at the scene, the head of the school district police department, believed at the time that Ramos was locked up and that children were no longer at immediate risk, giving officers time to prepare, McCraw said.
“From the point of view of hindsight, where I sit now, it was obviously not the right decision,” McCraw said. “That was the wrong decision, period.”
Standard law enforcement protocols call on police to confront an active school shooter without delay instead of waiting for backup or more firepower, a point McCraw acknowledged.
McCraw described other moments when Ramos could have been thwarted. A school officer, who responded to calls about an armed man who crashed into a car at the cemetery across the street, drove past Ramos as he crouched next to a vehicle on the school property. Police have said Ramos shot at two people standing outside before scaling a fence into the school grounds.
The door that gave Ramos access to the building had been kept open by a teacher, McCraw said, in violation of school district security policies.
As criticism of law enforcement response grew, police officers from cities as far away as Houston and Dallas began arriving in Uvalde to help support local authorities, and in some cases, provide protection to Uvalde’s own police, the mayor, and the arms deal. , where Ramos bought his arsenal.
Police cruisers were parked outside the home of Pedro Arredondo, the school district’s police chief. Police’s response to the shooting has been sharply criticized by, among others, McCraw and Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott.
Questions about police efforts to stop Ramos came as the United States’ leading advocate group for gun rights, the National Rifle Association, held its annual rally 443 km away in Houston.
Abbott, a Republican and loyalist rights activist who spoke at the meeting in a pre-recorded video, apparently seized police negligence in Uvalde, and told a news conference later that he was misled and “outraged at what happened.”
Abbott denied that newly enacted gun laws in Texas, including a controversial measure that removes licensing requirements for carrying a concealed weapon, had “any relevance” to Tuesday’s bloodshed. He suggested state legislators focus renewed attention on dealing with mental illness.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat who has called on Congress to approve new gun restrictions, will visit Uvalde on Sunday to comfort families and show respect for the young victims.