‘You need to do your jobs,’ angry parents yelled at cops on scene
The horrifying Texas school massacre, where 19 students and two teachers were killed, could have ended a lot sooner if clueless cops hadn’t dragged their feet and given the teenage gunman free reign in a barricaded classroom for nearly an hour, angry witnesses and parents said.
No one stopped gunman Salvador Ramos, 18, from entering the Uvalde school through an unlocked back door, not even an armed school officer who wasn’t even on the campus when Ramos crashed his truck in a ditch, grabbed his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle and stormed the helpless school.
After running inside, Ramos opened fire on two arriving Uvalde cops outside the building. Ramos then barricaded himself inside a classroom and began unleashing a hail of gunfire. “It just shows you the complete evil of the shooter,” said Lt. Christopher Olivarez of the Department of Public Safety told CNN.
Once inside, nearly an hour passed before a tactical team finally confronted him, according to desperate parents who said they pleaded with police to do something.
“A lot of us were arguing with the police, ‘You all need to go in there. You all need to do your jobs,’ ” said Javier Cazares, whose fourth-grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack. “Their response was, ‘We can’t do our jobs because you guys are interfering.”
Cazares said he and other anxious parents even huddled together to plot the unthinkable — storming the school themselves. “Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” he said, recounting the frantic conversation. “More could have been done.”
When a Border Patrol unit finally made its way in and killed the shooter — some 40 minutes later — the damage had already been done: 19 students and two of their teachers dead, the carnage so horrific that DNA samples had to be used to identify some of the victims.
That final approach put an end to the second deadliest shooting at a K-12 school in the United States since 2012, when 26 children and adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
It was at least the 30th shooting at a K-12 school in 2022, according to a CNN tally.
A law enforcement official said that once in the building, the Border Patrol agents had trouble breaching the classroom door and had to get a staffer to open the room with a key, according to The Associated Press.
Despite the ugly outcome, law enforcement officials defended the action of officers on the ground, saying cops led many students to safety while the gunman holed up inside.
“The bottom line is law enforcement was there,” said Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw. “They did engage immediately. They did contain [Ramos] in the classroom.”
Also on the hot seat was Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for maintaining his support of the gun lobby even in the face of the school shooting. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described the ardently pro-gun Texas governor as an “absolute fraud” in an indignant speech from the Senate floor on Thursday morning.
Schumer (D-N.Y.) piled on the governor one day after former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic nominee for governor in Texas, crashed a news conference in Uvalde and blasted Abbott for not doing enough to address gun violence in the wake of Tuesday’s shooting.
“After Beto O’Rourke confronted Texas Gov. Abbott’s press conference, the MAGA governor gave some empty platitudes about healing and hope,” Schumer said.
“How dare he? What an absolute fraud,” Schumer said, excoriating Abbott for a planned appearance at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston on Friday.
And at a Thursday night vigil in New York City, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams lamented the lack of effective action to address gun violence. “Our neighbors killed at the [Buffalo] supermarket, our neighbors killed in church. And again, nothing really changes,” he said. “The fake pro-lifers who pretend they care about life when they really want to control a woman’s body, but do nothing when people are being slaughtered.”
“Your thoughts and prayers are completely worthless. Keep them to yourself,” he said, demanding action to solve the root problem: “the legal access to guns and war machines.”
Meanwhile, President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Uvalde on Sunday to console families and honor victims.
The White House said the Bidens would “grieve with the community that lost 21 lives in the horrific” shooting. Press secretary Karine JeanPierre said the president would meet with the community and religious leaders and victims’ families. “These were elementary school kids,” JeanPierre said. “They should be losing their first teeth not losing their lives.”