Uwalde, Texas (AP) – The commander of the shooting range at an elementary school in Uwalde, Texas, was not informed of panic calls from 911 coming from students trapped in the building while the massacre took place, said a Texas senator in Thursday.
Senator Roland Gutierrez said requests for help from people at Robb 1 Elementary School on May 24 did not reach the district’s police chief, Pete Aredondo. The Democrat senator called the “failure of the system” that the calls went to the city police, but were not reported to Aredondo.
“I want to know specifically who received the 911 calls,” Gutierrez told a news conference, adding that no person or entity was completely to blame for the massacre.
However, he said, Governor Greg Abbott must take much of the responsibility for police failures.
“There were mistakes at every level, including the legislative level. “Greg Abbott is very much to blame for all this,” Gutierrez said.
Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in an attack on Rob Elementary School, the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade. Seventeen others were injured. Burials of those killed began this week.
The gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, spent about 80 minutes at the school, more than an hour after the first police officers followed him into the building and killed him by police.
After the shooting, law enforcement and government officials struggled to provide an accurate schedule and details of the event and how police responded, sometimes providing conflicting information or withdrawing statements a few hours later. State police said some accounts were preliminary and could change when more witnesses are questioned.
Much of the focus shifted to Aredondo. Stephen McCrow, head of Texas’s public safety department, said Aredondo believed the situation had become a hostage situation and had made the “wrong decision” not to order employees try to break into the classroom because 911 calling from outside.
Gutierrez said it was unclear whether any details of 911’s calls had been shared with law enforcement officials from a number of agencies at the scene.
“Uwalde PD was the one who received 911 calls for 45 minutes while the police officers sat in the corridor, while 19 police officers sat in the corridor for 45 minutes,” Gutierrez said. “We don’t know if these people were told or not.”
But, the senator said, the State Emergency Communications Commission told him that the school district police chief did not know.
“He is the commander of the incident. He did not receive the 911 calls, “Gutierrez said.
Uwalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez did not respond to a telephone call from the Associated Press asking for comment on Thursday.
Police communications were also a problem in 2019, when a gunman shot dead seven people and wounded more than two dozen during a shooting in Odessa, Texas. Authorities said then that 36-year-old Seth Aaron Ator had called 911 before and after the shooting, but a failure in communication between the agencies – not all working on the same radio channel – delayed the response. Ator managed to cover about 10 miles before officers shot and killed him.
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More about school shooting in Uwalde, Texas: https://apnews.com/hub/uvalde-school-shooting
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Blebirg reported from Dallas.
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