According to a fresh analysis of camera footage, Uvalde police delayed for than an hour to engage the elementary school gunman despite being highly armed and being told that several instructors and children locked in classrooms with him were still alive and needed medical assistance.
Pete Arredondo, the school police chief in Uvalde, has directed his officers not to enter Robb Elementary School until stronger equipment arrives.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that several of the first officers on the scene were heavily equipped with long rifles and handguns. Arredondo, on the other hand, appeared to be more concerned with procuring shields for the cops and locating a key to open the two classroom doors.
According to the New York Times, Arredondo quickly realized there were still more than a dozen survivors within the classrooms where shooter Salvador Ramos had locked himself in, but chose to wait one hour and 17 minutes before allowing his cops to enter.
There were 33 people in the classrooms, 19 of whom were children and two of whom were teachers. It’s unclear how many more lives would have been saved if Uvalde police had stormed the scene when the attacker opened fire.
The New York Times also received surveillance video from within the school, which showed Ramos wandering through vacant corridors.
He didn’t appear to fire until he reached Rooms 111 and 112, and it’s unclear why he chose those classrooms, though it’s possible that Irma Garcia, the teacher in Room 112, taught Ramos when he was a student.
Garcia and fellow teacher Eva Mireles were killed in the shooting.
The police response has been widely panned, with officers being chastised for failing to storm the premises promptly.
At 11:30 a.m., Ramos, the gunman, arrived at the school. He wasn’t shot until around 1 p.m.
‘If there are kids in there, we need to go in there,’ one officer can be heard saying as Arredondo tells them to keep back.
‘There’s a teacher shot in there,’ another informs a sergeant shortly before 12:30 p.m.
‘I know,’ said the sergeant.
‘We suspect there are some injuries in there,’ Arredondo is said to have said overheard.
‘And so you know what we did, we took out the rest of the building so we wouldn’t have any more, other than what was already in there, obviously,’ he continues.
Medics and family members have stressed the importance of sending injured people to the hospital as quickly as possible, particularly those who are bleeding from gunshot wounds.
Mireles, a 44-year-old teacher, died in an ambulance, and her husband Ruben Ruiz, one of six uniformed officers of the Uvalde school district’s police department, remarked at 11:48 a.m., “she claims she is shot.”
She was not hauled out until an hour later, after the gunman had been killed.
Three children, including Xavier Lopez, 10, were shot in the back and died in hospital.
Leonard Sandoval, his grandfather, remarked, ‘He could have been rescued.’
‘It took the cops more than an hour to get in.’ He bled to death.’
Arredondo attempted to talk to the gunman, 18-year-old Ramos, but got no reaction.
‘Mr Ramos, what’s up?’ Mr Ramos, can you hear us? According to the transcript, Arredondo requested a response in both English and Spanish but received no response.
Meanwhile, parents begged the authorities to enter the building. One mom rushed in and took her own children with her.
Some of the children were frantically dialing 911, pleading for assistance. It’s unclear whether Arredondo was informed of their calls.
Inside, there were 18 kids, eight of whom were killed, and two professors, both of whom were killed.
There were 15 students and one teacher in Room 111. Eleven children perished, and Arnulfo Reyes, the instructor, was shot but survived.
In a classroom across the hall, the gunman’s cousin was uninjured.
Ramos, who dropped out of high school in the fall of his senior year, purchased the two guns lawfully days after turning 18 using money he earned working at Wendy’s and performing air-conditioning work for his grandfather.
He also purchased a ‘hellfire’ trigger device, which converts a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon, but it is suspected that he did not know how to use it.
Both state and federal officials are looking into the police response.
When the incident occurred, Uvalde’s head of police, Daniel Rodriguez, was on vacation.
Arredondo has remained silent.