Tuesday morning, Robb Elementary School, Uvalde, Texas.
Desperate parents gather at the school while police wait outside and in the school hallway. The shooter, Salvador Ramos, is firing at children and teachers trapped in the classroom, and barricading himself for over an hour before the police enter and the shooter is killed.
Revealed: The police inside the school did not try to enter the classroom. Instead, they waited for a specialized tactical team.
Witnessed: Outside, instead of entering the school, even with the sounds of shots being fired in the school, officers shoved, tackled and handcuffed parents who were trying to save their children, even drawing guns on the parents, who were pleading with the officers.
After the initial reports about the shooting, and officers were praised by Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, officials in Ovalde began to change their tune and admitted that the police had hesitated to enter the school for over 40 minutes while waiting for the tactical team. The senior officer made the decision to wait because he admittedly thought that the worst was over, implying that there were no lives left to save and that the shooter was barricading himself in the classroom.
Meanwhile, inside, children were frantically calling 911 on their cell phones.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw stated on Friday that nearly 20 officers were waiting in a hallway outside of the classrooms for more than 45 minutes before the Border Patrol tactical agents confronted the gunman.
”Of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision,” McCraw said. He admitted that there were moments before the confrontation that the shooter could have been stopped, and perhaps lives would have been saved
How many lives? No one knows, but children were still alive in the classroom while the officers were hesitating to enter the classroom.
There was no security officer present that morning at the school. He arrived after the shooter was already on the school campus.
As authorities revealed the timeline, the narrative changed and the facts dribbled in. Here’s what we know.
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety:
- 11:27: The exterior school door where Ramos soon entered the school was propped open by a teacher.
- 11:28: The shooter crashed his vehicle into a ditch. At the same time, a teacher ran to a classroom to get a phone, then walked back to the exit door that remained propped open. Ramos started shooting at two men from a neighboring funeral home who approached the crash scene. The men were not hit. A teacher called 911 from inside the school and told police there was a car crash and an active shooter outside the school.
- 11:31 Ramos began shooting at the school from the parking lot. Police vehicles arrived at the scene.
- 11:33: Ramos entered the school through the open door and began shooting into a fourth grade classroom. He shot more than 100 rounds,
- 11:35: Three Uvalde police officers entered the school through the door that the shooter had used. Another four Uvalde officers went into the school, along with a deputy sheriff, totaling seven officers inside the school. The shooter shot at the officers.
- 11:37: Another 16 rounds were fired inside the classroom.
- 11:43: The school announced a lockdown.
- 11:51: More police and US Border Patrol agents arrived on the scene.
- 12:03: By this time, about 19 officers were in the hallway of the school.
- 12:15: Border Patrol tactical team arrived with three bulletproof shields.
- 12:21: Ramos continued to fire more shots. Officers moved down the hallway.
- They didn’t enter the classroom until another 30 minutes.
- 12:50: Officers received keys from a janitor and entered the classroom, killing the gunman.
The US Department of Justice, seemingly in response to growing public outrage, will investigate the police response to Uvalde’s mass shooting which killed 19 children and two teachers.
The Department of Justice said the goal was to “provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events.”