Police response criticized
Timeline of events in Uvalde leaves many questions unanswered
A gunman roamed outside a Texas elementary school for about 12 minutes, entered without challenge and spent an hour inside before he was killed by law enforcement, authorities said Thursday, revising key details in their account of the massacre as the police response to it was criticized by some parents.
The new details of how 18-yearold Salvador Ramos was able to kill 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, together with cellphone videos and witness accounts of police outside tackling or handcuffing desperate parents who tried to rush into the building, called into question earlier claims by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott that a “quick response” by law enforcement had saved lives.
Police who arrived at the school retreated when Ramos shot at them, state authorities said Thursday. An hour elapsed before a tactical unit led by federal Border Patrol agents went into a classroom and killed the gunman. The initial response appears to have veered from guidance, widely implemented since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, that says officers should pursue shooters inside buildings without waiting for specialized backup.
Texas authorities on Thursday also retracted a previous claim that an officer had approached and possibly fired at the gunman outside the school, saying that in fact the shooter “walked in undisrupted.” About 10 minutes before Ramos went into the building, authorities said, he opened fire on witnesses by a nearby funeral home, and a 911 caller reported a man carrying a gun.
The amended account of the shootings was offered by Victor Escalon Jr., regional director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, who said three times that he would “clear up” previous statements. Escalon spoke at a chaotic news con
ference Thursday afternoon after the appearance in news reports and on social media of the cellphone videos, some of which showed tearful parents pleading with officers in tactical gear — some carrying rifles or Tasers — to go inside the school and tackle the gunman, or allow them to do so themselves.
Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-old daughter, Jacklyn, was inside the school, said in an interview that he and other men demanded action from police as they huddled by a door to the school. “There were five or six of [us] fathers, hearing the gunshots, and [police officers] were telling us to move back,” Cazares said. “We didn’t care about us. We wanted to storm the building.”
Cazares later learned Jacklyn had been shot and killed.
Abbott, whose uncompromising pro-gun stances have been sharply criticized by Democrats since the massacre, hailed the swiftness of the police response on Wednesday and praised their tactics.
“It is a fact that because of their quick response getting on the scene, being able to respond to the gunman and eliminate the gunman, they were able to save lives,” Abbott said at a news conference.
Escalon defended the police response at Thursday’s news conference, beginning with emotional remarks about the toll taken on law enforcement. “It’s hard to take. It is traumatic. We’re all hurting inside,” he said.
But after two days in which officials had offered partial and contradictory details of how the shooting unfolded, Escalon’s account also was confusing and unclear at points.
He said the gunman, who shot his grandmother and fled in a pickup, crashed the vehicle at 11:28 a.m. Photographs from the scene show the gray Ford pickup stopped next to broken railings at a ditch-like concrete area beside the western perimeter of the school grounds.
At 11:30 a.m., police received the first 911 call reporting that a man who had crashed a vehicle was carrying a gun, according to Escalon.
Escalon said witnesses described the gunman exiting the passenger side of his truck, carrying a rifle and a bag. He opened fire on two people who had walked out of a funeral home across the street, according to Escalon’s telling of the witness accounts. The gunman then walked toward the school, climbed a fence and shot at the school from a parking lot.
He appears to have entered the school through a door that was unlocked, Escalon said.
Officials had previously stated that the gunman was confronted by a school police officer who fired at him. Later, they said the officer had confronted him but did not open fire. Escalon said Thursday that both versions were inaccurate:
No officer confronted the gunman before he entered the west side of the school at 11:40 a.m., Escalon said, adding “there was not an officer readily available.”
Officers from the Uvalde Police Department and the school district police department arrived four minutes after the gunman entered the school, according to Escalon, who offered unclear statements about how close those officers got to Ramos. Having first said the officers were “inside making entry” and took cover after coming under fire, he then said: “They don’t make entry initially because of the gunfire.”
Since Columbine in 1999, many police departments have trained officers to go after an attacker as soon as possible, to minimize the number of teachers and children shot. Before then, guidance often emphasized waiting for specially trained officers, such as a SWAT team. The speed and willingness of officers to pursue shooters into buildings has been called into question following other attacks in recent years, including the massacre at a high school in Parkland, Fla., in 2018.
Uvalde Police Department’s policy on responding to an active shooter is not publicly available, but a sample policy manual offered to local departments by the Texas Police Chiefs Association states: “The first two to five responding officers should form a single team and enter the structure.” The sample manual contains best practices and has been used by more than 100 agencies, according to the association.