Police face questions over their response to Texas school massacre
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[May 27, 2022] By
Brad Brooks and Gabriella Borter
UVALDE, Texas (Reuters) -The gunman in the
Texas school massacre barged unchallenged through an unlocked door, then
killed 19 children and two teachers while holed up in their classroom
for an hour before a tactical team stormed in and killed him, police
said on Thursday.
The latest official details from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)
on Tuesday's mass shooting differed sharply from initial police accounts
and raised questions about security measures at the elementary school
and the response of law enforcement.
The school district in Uvalde, Texas, about 80 miles (130 km) west of
San Antonio, has a standing policy of locking all entrances, including
classroom doors, as a safety precaution. But one student told Reuters
some doors were left unlocked the day of the shooting to allow visiting
parents to come and go for an awards day event.
The newly detailed chronology came hours after videos emerged showing
desperate parents outside Robb Elementary School during the attack. They
pleaded with officers to storm the building, and some fathers had to be
restrained.
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The human toll of the rampage, which ranks as the deadliest U.S. school
shooting in nearly a decade, deepened with news that the husband of one
of the slain teachers died of a heart attack on Thursday while preparing
for his wife's funeral.
At a briefing for reporters, DPS spokesperson Victor Escalon said the
gunman, Salvador Ramos, 18, made his way unimpeded on to the school
grounds after crashing his pickup truck nearby. The carnage began 12
minutes later.
Preliminary police reports had said that Ramos, who drove to the school
from his home after shooting and wounding his grandmother there, was
confronted by a school-based police officer as he ran toward the school.
Instead, no armed officer was present when Ramos arrived at the school,
Escalon said.
The suspect crashed his pickup truck nearby at 11:28 a.m. (1628 GMT),
opened fire on two people at a funeral home across the street, then
scaled a fence onto school property and walked into one of the buildings
through an unlocked rear door at 11:40 a.m. (1640 GMT), Escalon said.
Two responding officers entered the school four minutes later but took
cover after Ramos fired multiple rounds at them, Escalon said.
The shooter then barricaded himself inside the fourth-grade classroom of
his victims, mostly 9- and 10-year-olds, for an hour before a U.S.
Border Patrol tactical team breached the room and fatally shot him,
Escalon said. Officers reported hearing at least 25 gunshots coming from
inside the classroom early in the siege, he said.
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'TOUGH QUESTION'
The hour-long interval before border agents stormed in appeared to be at
odds with an approach adopted by many law enforcement agencies to
confront "active shooters" at schools immediately to stop bloodshed.
Asked if police should have made en masse entry sooner, Escalon
answered, "That's a tough question," adding that authorities would offer
more information as the investigation proceeded.
He described a chaotic scene after the initial exchange of gunfire, with
officers calling for backup and evacuating students and staff.
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![](../images/052722PIX/news_m23.jpg)
Texas Department of Public Safety officers stand in front of a
memorial outside Robb Elementary school, after a gunman killed
nineteen children and two teachers, in Uvalde, Texas, U.S. May 26,
2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/May/27/images/ads/current/graue_sda_042021.png)
In one video posted on Facebook by a man named Angel
Ledezma, parents can be seen breaking through yellow police tape and
yelling at officers to go into the building.
"It's already been an hour, and they still can't get all the kids
out," Ledezma said in the video. He did not immediately respond to a
request for comment.
Another video posted on YouTube showed officers
restraining at least one adult. One woman can be heard saying, "Why
let the children die? There's shooting in there."
"We got guys going in to get kids," one officer is heard telling the
crowd. "They're working."
'AWARDS DAY'
Investigators were still seeking a motive, Escalon said. Ramos, a
high school dropout, had no criminal record and no history of mental
illness. Minutes before the attack, however, he had written an
online message saying he was about to "shoot up an elementary
school," according to Governor Greg Abbott.
The gunman's father, also named Salvador Ramos, 42, expressed
remorse for his son's actions in an interview published Thursday by
news site The Daily Beast.
"I just want the people to know I’m sorry, man, [for] what my son
did," he was quoted as saying. "He should’ve just killed me, you
know, instead of doing something like that to someone."
In one of the more chilling accounts of the shooting, a fourth-grade
boy who was in the classroom told local TV station KENS5 that the
gunman announced his presence when he entered by crouching slightly
and saying, "It's time to die."
Why a rear door to the school building would be left unsecured
remained under investigation, Escalon said.
Miguel Cerrillo, 35, and his 8-year-old daughter, Elena, a
third-grader at Robb, said the door the shooter used was usually
locked.
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“But that day they were not locked because it was awards day, and
some parents were coming in through those doors,” said Elena, who
was in the school at the time of the shooting. “The parking was
really packed in front so people were parking back there and using
that door.”
At least 17 people, including children, were also injured in the
massacre.
The attack, coming 10 days after 10 people were killed by an
18-year-old gunman in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, has
reignited a national debate over firearms. U.S. President Joe Biden
and fellow Democrats have vowed to push for new gun restrictions,
despite resistance from Republicans.
Biden is due to travel Uvalde on Sunday.
(Reporting by Gabriella Borter and Brad Brooks in Uvalde, Texas;
additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago, Doina Chiacu in
Washington, Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico and Costas Pitas in Los
Angeles; writing by Joseph Ax and Steve Gorman; editing by Cynthia
Osterman and Stephen Coates)
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