Texas top cop: Uvalde police response an ‘abject failure’

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Law enforcement authorities had enough officers on the scene of the Uvalde school massacre to have stopped the gunman three minutes after he entered the building, and they never checked a classroom door to see if it was locked, the Texas public safety chief testified Tuesday, pronouncing the police response an "abject failure."

Police officers with rifles instead stood and waited for over an hour before they finally stormed the classroom and killed the gunman, putting an end to the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

The classroom door, it turned out, could not be locked from the inside, yet there is no indication officers tried to open the door while the gunman was inside, Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, testified. Instead, he said, police waited around for a key.

"I have great reasons to believe it was never secured,"

McCraw said the door. "How about trying the door and seeing if it's locked?" McCraw testified at a state Senate hearing on the police handling of the tragedy. Delays in the law enforcement response have become the focus of federal, state and local investigations.

"Obviously, not enough training was done in this situation, plain and simple. Because terrible decisions were made by the on-site commander," McCraw said of Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief.

Eight minutes after the shooter entered the building, an officer reported that police had a "hooligan" crowbar that they could use to break down the classroom door, McCraw said. Nineteen minutes after the gunman entered, the first ballistic shield was brought into the building by police, the witness testified.

McCraw told the Senate committee that Arredondo decided to put the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children.