The gunman who slaughtered 19 children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school was inside for more than an hour before he was killed in a shootout with law enforcement, police officials said Thursday, amid growing outrage and scrutiny. his response to the shooting.
A press conference called by Texas public safety officials to clarify the timeline of the attack provided previously unknown bits of information. By the time it was over, however, there were more perplexing questions surrounding the attack in the town of Uvalde, including the time it took for police to arrive at the scene and confront the assailant, and the apparent failure to lock a door. why the attacker entered the school.
After two days of providing often conflicting information, investigators say a school district police officer was not inside Robb Elementary School when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos arrived around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. Also, contradicting previous reports, the officer did not confront the assailant outside the building.
Instead, they presented a timeline notable for notable and inexplicable delays by authorities in responding to the attack.
Ramos crashed his truck near the back of the school at 11:28 a.m. Tuesday, then fired his AR-type rifle at two people who were leaving a nearby funeral home, said Victor Escalon, regional director of the Department of Texas Public Safety.
Ramos later entered “without obstruction” through a door that appeared to be unlocked around 11:40, Escalon said.
But the first police officers didn’t arrive on the scene until 12 minutes after the crash, and it took them another four minutes to enter the building to go after the assailant. Once inside, they were repelled by Ramos’s shots and had to take cover, Escalon said.
The crisis was not over until several Border Patrol agents entered nearly an hour later, at 12:45 p.m., Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Travis Considine said. They got into a shootout with Ramos, who had barricaded himself in an area of the 4th grade classroom he attacked. Radio communication at 12:58 indicated that the aggressor had died.
In the hour that passed, the agents requested reinforcements, negotiators and tactical teams, in addition to evacuating students and teachers, Escalon said.
But the official largely ignored questions about why officers weren’t able to apprehend the shooter sooner, saying he had “considered all those questions” and would provide updates later.
Many other details of the case and the police response remain unclear. The motive for the massacre — the nation’s deadliest school shooting since one in Newtown, Connecticut, a decade ago — remains under investigation, and authorities say Ramos had no prior criminal record or mental health record.
During the shooting, frustrated witnesses urged police officers to enter the school.
“Come in! Come in!” several women shouted at the officers shortly after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24, who watched the scene from a house across the street.
Carranza said that the agents should have entered earlier: “There were more of them. He was only one.”
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw defended his agency on Wednesday, saying “the important thing is that the police were there. They got involved immediately. They contained (Ramos) in the classroom.”
Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz did not provide a timeline of the events, but repeatedly noted that the tactical agents from his department who arrived at the school did not hesitate. He said they moved quickly to enter the building, lining up behind an officer holding a shield.
“We wanted to make sure we act quickly, quickly, and that’s exactly what those agents did,” Ortiz told Fox News.
However, a law enforcement official said that once inside the building, Border Patrol agents had trouble opening the classroom door and were forced to call a staff member to unlock it. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.
Department of Public Safety spokesman Lt. Christopher Olivarez told CNN that investigators are trying to determine if the classroom was actually locked or obstructed in some way.
Javier Cazares, whose daughter Jacklyn Cazares was killed during the shooting, said he rushed to school as the massacre was taking place. Upon his arrival, he saw two policemen outside the school and five others evacuating students. But it took 15 to 20 minutes before officers equipped to confront the assailant arrived, he said.
As more parents arrived at the scene, he and others pressured police to do something, Cazares said. He heard about four shots before they were ordered to pull back into a parking lot.
“A lot of us were arguing with the police, telling them, ‘You need to get in, you need to do your job.’ His response was: ‘We can’t do our job because you are interfering,’” Cazares recounted.
As for the armed school agent, he was driving by but was not on campus at the time Ramos crashed his truck, according to a police official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.
Investigators have concluded that the school agent was not between Ramos and the school, so he was unable to confront the assailant before he entered the building, the police official said.
