Stephen McCrow, director of the Texas Public Safety Department, says police made the wrong decision by waiting nearly an hour for additional staff before storming a classroom where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers. He explained that all officers in Texas have active training and certification in shooting, which requires them to participate until the site is dead.
Students trapped in a classroom with an armed man repeatedly called 911 during the attack on a primary school in Texas this week, including one begging, “Please send police now,” as nearly 20 officers waited in corridor more than 45 minutes, authorities said Friday.
The commander of the Uwalde scene – the school’s police chief – believes 18-year-old shooter Salvador Ramos has been barricaded in adjacent classrooms at Rob Elementary School and that children are no longer at risk, Stephen McCrow, Texas’s chief of staff public safety told a contested press conference.
“It was the wrong decision,” he said.
Friday’s briefing came after authorities spent three days providing often contradictory and incomplete information about the 90 minutes between Ramos entering the school and US Border Patrol agents unlocking a classroom door and killing him.
Ramos killed 19 children and two teachers, but his motive remains unclear, authorities said.
The gun violence in America, told through seven diagrams
Shortly after Ramos entered the classroom, where officers eventually killed him, there was a burst of gunfire, but the shots were “sporadic” for much of the 48 minutes as police waited in the hallway, McCrow said. He said investigators did not know if and how many children had died during that time.
During the attack, teachers and children repeatedly called 911 for help, including a girl who begged, “Please send police now,” McCrow said.
Questions have grown about the time it takes for police officers to enter the school to confront an armed man.
It was 11:28 a.m. Tuesday when Ramos’ Ford pickup truck crashed into a ditch behind a Texas low school and the driver jumped out carrying an AR-15-style rifle.
Five minutes later, according to authorities, Ramos entered the school and found his way to the fourth-grade classroom, where he killed 21 victims.
But it was not until 12:58 pm on the radio that law enforcement officials said 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 town of Uwalde, fueled growing public anger and control over law enforcement officials’ response to Tuesday’s riot.
“They say they rushed,” said Javier Casares, whose fourth-grader daughter, Jacqueline Casares, was killed in the attack and rushed to the school while the massacre took place. “We didn’t see that.”
According to a new schedule provided by McCrow, after crashing his truck, Ramos shot two people coming out of a nearby funeral home, officials said.
Contrary to earlier statements by officials, a police officer from the school district was not at the school when Ramos arrived. When the officer responded, he unconsciously passed Ramos, who was crouching behind a car parked outside and shooting at the building, McCrow said.
Photos: Memorial to the victims of the mass shooting at Texas Elementary School
At 11:33 p.m., Ramos entered the school through a back door that was propped open and fired more than 100 rounds into a pair of classrooms, McCrow said.
MRF spokesman Travis Considine said investigators had not established why the door was open.
Two minutes later, three local police officers arrived and entered the building through the same door, followed shortly after by four others, McCrow said. Within 15 minutes, about 19 employees from various agencies gathered in the corridor, taking sporadic fire from Ramos, which was hidden in a classroom.
Ramos was still inside at 12:10 a.m. when the first deputies of the U.S. Marshals Service arrived. They were racing to a school of nearly 70 miles (113 kilometers) in the border town of Del Rio, the agency tweeted on Friday.
But the building’s police commander decided the group had to wait to face the armed assailant, as he believed the scene was no longer an active attack, McCrow said.
The crisis ended after a group of tactical border patrol officers entered the school at 12:45 p.m., Texas spokesman Travis Considine said. 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.
Ken Trump, president of the National School of Safety and Security Services, a consulting firm, said the length of the timeline raised questions.
“Based on best practices, it is very difficult to understand why there were some kinds of delays, especially when you receive reports of 40 minutes or more to neutralize this shooter,” he said.
Analysis: In a country where mass shootings are the norm, Americans have gone beyond outrage
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 the officers should have entered the school earlier: “There were more of them. There was only one of him. “
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.
Michael Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International, which works to make schools safer, warned that it was difficult to get a clear understanding of the facts soon after the shooting.
“The information we have a few weeks after an event is usually quite different from what we receive in the first day or two. And even that is usually quite inaccurate, “Dorn said. For catastrophic events, “you’re usually 8 to 12 months old before you really have a decent picture.”
A mother describes her daughter’s experience of surviving the massacre at Rob Elementary School in Uwalde, Texas. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed in Sandy Hook’s deadliest school shooting nearly a decade ago.
The globe and the mail
Our morning and evening newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a brief summary of the most important headlines of the day. Register today.
Add Comment