Uvalde police waited for their body armor
Aware of injuries, police chief didn’t want officers hurt
AUSTIN, TEXAS » Heavily armed officers delayed confronting a gunman in Uvalde, Texas, for more than an hour despite supervisors at the scene being told that some trapped with him in two elementary school classrooms needed medical treatment, a new review of video footage and other investigative material shows. Instead, the documents show, they waited for protective equipment to lower the risk to law enforcement officers.
The school district police chief, who was leading the response to the May 24 shooting, appeared to be agonizing over the length of time it was taking to secure the shields that would help protect officers and to find a key for the classroom doors, according to law enforcement documents and video gathered as part of the investigation reviewed by The New York Times.
The chief, Pete Arredondo, and others at the scene became aware that not everyone inside the classrooms was dead, the documents showed, including a report from a school district police officer whose wife, a teacher, had spoken to him by phone from one of the classrooms to say she had been shot.
More than a dozen of the 33 children and three teachers originally in the two classrooms remained alive during the 1 hour and 17 minutes from the time the shooting began inside the classrooms to when four officers made entry, law enforcement investigators have concluded.
“People are going to ask why we’re taking so long,”
Law enforcement officials are seen outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, following the mass shooting on May 24.
a man who investigators believe to be Arredondo could be heard saying, according to a transcript of officers’ body camera footage. “We’re trying to preserve the rest of the life.”
Investigators have been working to determine whether any of those who died could have been saved, according to an official with knowledge of the effort. But there is no question that some of the victims were still alive and in desperate need of medical attention. One teacher died in an ambulance. Three children died at nearby hospitals.
Supervisors at the scene at some point became aware that there were people inside the classrooms who needed saving.
“We think there are some injuries in there,” the man believed to be Arredondo said several minutes before the breach, according to the transcript. “And so you know what we did, we cleared off the rest of the building so we wouldn’t have any more,
besides what’s already in there, obviously.”
But even with additional documents and video, much about the chaotic scene remained unclear, including precisely when Arredondo and other senior officers became aware of injuries inside the classrooms.
Among the revelations in the documents: The gunman, Salvador Ramos, had a “hellfire” trigger device meant to allow a semiautomatic AR-15-style rifle to be fired more like an automatic weapon; some of the officers who first arrived at the school had more firepower than previously known; and Arredondo learned the gunman’s identity while inside the school and attempted in vain to communicate with him. But with two officers who initially approached the door shot at and grazed, Arredondo appeared to have decided that quickly breaching the classrooms without protection would have led to officers possibly being killed.