WWALD, Texas (AP) – It was 11:28 a.m. when a Ford pickup truck crashed into a ditch behind a Texas low school and the driver jumped out carrying an AR-15-style rifle.
Twelve minutes later, according to authorities, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos was in the corridors of Rob Elementary School. He soon entered a fourth-grade classroom. And there he killed 19 students and two teachers in a still unexplained spasm of violence.
At 12:58 a.m., law enforcement officials said on the radio that Ramos had been killed and the siege was over.
What happened during those 90 minutes, in a working-class neighborhood near the outskirts of the small town of Uwalde, fueled growing public anger and control over law enforcement response to the riot on Tuesday.
“They say they rushed,” said Javier Casares, whose fourth-class daughter, Jacqueline Casares, was killed in the attack. He ran to the school while the massacre took place. “We didn’t see that.”
Authorities on Thursday largely ignored questions about why officers failed to stop the shooter earlier, with Victor Escalon, regional director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, telling reporters he had “taken all these issues into account” and would suggest updates later.
A media briefing convened by Texas security officials to clarify the timeline of the attack provided pieces of hitherto unknown information. But as he finished, he added to the worrying questions about the attack, including the time it took police to reach the scene and confront the armed man, and the apparent failure to lock the door of the school he entered.
After two days of providing often conflicting information, investigators said a school district police officer was not at the school when Ramos arrived, and contrary to previous reports, the officer did not encounter Ramos outside the building.
Instead, they set a timeline, notable for unexplained delays by law enforcement.
After crashing his truck, Ramos shot two people coming out of a nearby funeral home, Escalon said. He then entered the school “unimpeded” through an apparently unlocked door around 11:40 p.m.
But the first police officers arrived at the scene only 12 minutes after the accident and did not enter the school to chase the shooter until four minutes later. Inside, they were brought back by gunfire from Ramos and hid, Escalon said.
The crisis ended after a group of tactical border patrol officers entered the school about an hour later, at 12:45 p.m., said Texas Public Security spokesman Travis Considine. They got involved in a shootout with the shooter, who was hidden in a fourth-grade classroom. He was dead shortly before 1 p.m.
Escalon said during this time, officers called in reinforcements, negotiating and tactical teams as they evacuated students and teachers.
Many other details of the case and the answer remained unclear. The motive for the massacre – the deadliest school shooting in the country since Newtown, Connecticut, nearly a decade ago – remains under investigation, with authorities claiming Ramos had no known criminal or mental history.
During the siege, frustrated onlookers called on police to raid the school, according to witnesses.
“Get in there!” Get in there! ” the women shouted at police shortly after the attack began, said 24-year-old Juan Caranza, who was watching the scene from the front house across the street.
Karanza said police officers should have entered the school earlier: “There were more of them. There was only one of them. “
Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz did not give a timeline, but repeatedly said his agency’s tactical officers, who arrived at the school, did not hesitate. He said they moved quickly to enter the building, lining up behind a shielding agent.
“What we wanted to be sure of was to act fast, to act fast, and that’s exactly what these agents did,” Ortiz told Fox News.
But a law enforcement official said that once in the building, the agents had trouble breaking into the classroom door and had to get an officer to open the room with a key. The official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.
Public safety spokesman Lieutenant Christopher Olivares told CNN that investigators were trying to determine if the classroom was actually locked or barricaded in any way.
Casares said that when he arrived, he saw two employees in front of the school and about five others escorting students from the building. But it was 15 or 20 minutes before officers arrived with shields equipped to face weapons, he said.
As more and more parents flocked to the school, he and others pressured police to act, Casares said. He heard about four shots before he and the others were ordered to return to the parking lot.
“Many of us argued with the police: ‘You all have to go in there. You all have to do your job. Their response was, “We can’t do our job because you’re interfering,” Casares said.
As for the armed school, he was driving nearby but was not on campus when Ramos crashed his truck, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Investigators concluded that the school employee was not located between the school and Ramos, which left him unable to face the shooter before entering the building, the police officer said.
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Bleiberg reported from Dallas.
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