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WWALDE, Texas – After sneaking out of Rob’s elementary school through an unlocked side entrance, 18-year-old Salvador Rolando Ramos stormed into neighboring classrooms and informed terrified fourth-graders that it was “time to die.”
“Good night,” Ramos said before shooting and killing a teacher.
According to eyewitness accounts, students followed. Children watching Lilo and Stitch bumped into hiding. Hot shrapnel burned the elegant outfits that some wore to the awards ceremony earlier in the morning of May 24. A girl smeared herself with the blood of a classmate and pretended to be dead.
Witnesses said the attack lasted so long that the shooter had time to make fun of his victims before killing them, even playing songs that a student described to CNN as “I want people to die music.” Over the minutes, more and more desperate students called 911.
At 12:03 a.m., a girl called 911 for just over a minute and whispered that she was in Room 112, according to Texas Public Safety Director Stephen K. McCrow. She called back at 12:10 a.m., saying many people had died, he said, and again a few minutes later to say a number of students were still alive.
“Please send the police now,” the girl asked the dispatcher at 12:43 a.m., 40 minutes after her first call.
It will be some time before the authorities finally come in and kill Ramos shortly before 1 p.m. for security and a catastrophically slow response from the authorities in this city in southern Texas.
A total of 19 children and two teachers were killed and 17 others injured, a devastating tax on a small, densely knit, predominantly Hispanic-speaking community where relatives used to be in the same class at school. In the days that followed, local heartaches erupted in anger as Texas officials spoke of the courage of the police, ignoring the mistakes of law enforcement, whose recognition took days.
Timeline: How the police reacted to the shooter at a school in Texas
Only now is a more reliable chronology emerging through official statements, 911 diaries, social media posts and interviews with survivors and witnesses. The revelations tell a story of institutional failure at the expense of unprotected children. Here in Uwalde, there is little expectation that adjusting the record will lead to any real change in policy, especially with the outline of hyper-party by-elections.
“I mean, there are protests over gun laws and other things, checks on the past, but that’s not going anywhere,” said 17-year-old Angel Flores, speaking at a hospital in San Antonio, where she was visiting two relatives who were taken away. there after they were shot in Uwalde.
“Sandy Hook happened 10 years ago?” Said Angel’s father, 37-year-old David Flores, referring to the 2012 mass shooting at a primary school in Newtown, Connecticut. “It’s the same thing, again on the road. Nothing changes. ”
On Tuesday morning, Dora and Bob Estrada settled in to watch their favorite day soap, The Bold and the Beautiful.
As she waited for her show to begin, Dora heard two popping sounds from the direction of Robb Elementary across the street. She told her husband she thought it was a shooting.
He said, “No, it can’t be,” Dora recalls. “I said, ‘No, these are shots.'”
Dora was worried about her grandson, Jaden, a sophomore at Rob. A little later, her daughter, Jaden’s mother, called to warn her parents to lock their door; she had heard of an active shooter threat. The Estradi family decided to go out and check out the school and noticed “a bunch of cops on the corner.”
“They were just standing there,” Dora said.
Given the time period, these first pop-up speeches Dora heard probably came from early shots Ramos fired as soon as he arrived at the school at 11:28 a.m., targeting people on the street who heard him. They push their truck into a ditch and come to their aid. Minutes earlier, he shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face at a nearby home, picked up her vehicle and walked the short distance to Rob Elementary School. Grandma survived and called 911; authorities did not disclose the exact time or content of her call until 911.
New details have dispelled earlier accounts of a clash between a shooter and an armed school police officer outside the school, a story the authorities have changed four times. First, officers said the gunman exchanged fire with a police officer in front of the school before entering. McCrow later said there was a meeting, but no shots were exchanged between the two. On Thursday, officials said there was no collision at all and that the shooter had simply entered. On Friday, McCrow added that the school police officer was not on campus, but rushed there after calling 911 for a man with a gun in an accident.
“He’s driving right up to the suspect, who was crouching behind a vehicle in the parking lot and mistaken an intruder teacher,” McCrow said.
Ramos entered the school at 11:33 a.m. through a back door that was supposed to be locked but open, authorities said. The shooter went to the back of the building, turned down the hall and started firing on classrooms 111 and 112, authorities said, unloading more than 100 rounds in the first moments.
At the sound of gunshots, children and staff in other parts of the building began to leave the school, with some heading to safety at a nearby funeral home. Others did not have time to flee.
In Room 109, teacher Elsa Avila rushed to lock the door and turn off the lights. She told her students to hide under their desks, recalled 9-year-old survivor Daniel, whose mother asked that his last name not be used.
Daniel saw Ramos approach the window of his classroom door and shoot through the glass, hitting Avila and another student a few feet away. Daniel said he and the others were “playing dead” in the classroom because they were afraid he might see them.
Bullets circled the classroom, one fragment hitting a fellow student’s nose. Daniel remembered a “crunching” sound when he hit the bone. Pressed by the locked door, Ramos walked back down the hall and back to rooms 111 and 112, the adjoining classrooms.
McCrow said three Uwalde police officers were the first officers at the school and that two were wounded by Ramos at the time.
Macro said Ramos locked the doors of rooms 111 and 112, but briefly reappeared in the room – at a time when McCrow did not point out, but this is likely when those in room 109 were shot – before again to be locked in the adjoining classrooms.
The shooting was heard at 11:37 a.m., 11:38 a.m., 11:40 a.m. and 11:44 a.m., McCrow said.
Four other local officials – from the police station and the county sheriff’s office – arrived, according to McCrow, at a time he did not say.
None of the police officers tried to enter rooms 111 and 112 and collide with the shooter, officials said.
The small school police in Uwalde took over, after which they failed to enter
At least until 12.15 pm, McCrow said that “up to 19” law enforcement officers had gathered in the school corridor, including members of the tactical team of the border patrol, who arrived with shields.
“There were a lot of officers to do the right thing,” McCrow said. But the incident commander believed more equipment and people were needed to “break through”, McCrow said, adding that he felt law enforcement “had time” and did not see “no children at risk”.
At about the same time, the student in Room 112 called again. She said eight or nine students were alive. Three minutes later, at 12:19 p.m., a student in Room 111 called 911 but closed at the request of another student, McCrow said. At 12:21 a.m., he said, three shots were heard over line 911.
While the attack was going on, insane parents began to show up at Rob’s after receiving signals of active gunfire. The scene outside the police cordon became tense as families wanted to know why officers did not break into the building to save their children. The video shows insane families walking, crossing the border, cursing police officers.
A video broadcast live on May 24 shows families in front of Rob Elementary School in Uwalde, Texas, frustrated by police and trying to enter the building. (Video: Anonymous via Storyful)
Danny Reyes, 51, heard about the shooting at his service station half a mile from Rob, where his grandson and six nephews are listed. He drove off immediately, arriving around 11:40 a.m., according to phone diaries describing frantic calls he made while looking for a parking space.
When he arrived, Reiss said more than a dozen parents had already gathered near the school’s entrance, urging police to do more to intervene. On the east side of the building, he said, another group of parents tried to break through a fence to enter the school, but were repulsed by police.
Felix Rubio, 39, a relative of Reis, heard angry parents tell police “go to hell.” When authorities insisted they were doing their job, Rubio said, a man shouted at them, “Take your rifle and do business.”
Desperate parents could do nothing but wait, believing that the authorities were doing everything possible to protect the students.
“There are 6-year-old children inside,” a man complained in a video taken in front of the school the other day. “They don’t know how to defend themselves from a shooter.”
At the time when the authorities announced the attack was over, shortly after 1 pm, Estradas found his grandson’s teacher and learned that he was safe. Reiss’s grandson and nephews also came out, but his niece, 9-year-old Eliana Garcia, was shot and killed.
Some parents have learned that their children are dead hours later, in …
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