‘Gunman walked in unobstructed’
UVALDE (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 130 kilometers 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.
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.
Meanwhile, in Canada, Toronto police shot and killed a man who was walking down a street carrying a gun in a city neighborhood on Thursday afternoon, an incident that prompted five nearby schools to be placed under precautionary lockdown, city officials said.
Officers responding to a report of an armed man in the area fired after the gunman confronted them, Toronto police chief James Ramer said at a media briefing. He declined to give further details.
“I don’t want to speculate that it’s similar to what’s happening in the US,” Ramer said.