Two days after a gunmanopened fireat Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the police response is coming under scrutiny — with many people at the scene claiming that officers did not do enough to stop the shooting that left19 children and two adultsdead.
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“There was a lot of chaos,” says Ernest “Chip” King, a Uvalde firefighter who estimated that the gunfire went on for about 40 minutes. “Fathers smashed windows, and physically pulled their kids out of classrooms.”
Some relatives at the scene believe that the police hesitation cost lives.
“Everyone was just showing up and they weren’t doing anything,” says Berlinda Arreola, 49, whose granddaughterAmerie Jo Garzawas killed in the attack. “The parents were being all crazy, like ‘why aren’t you all doing anything? Why aren’t you going in?’ But they were like, ‘until he opens gunfire, we can’t do anything. We’re holding on so that he doesn’t open gunfire.'”
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But Arreola tells PEOPLE that it was too late. “We didn’t know that he had already opened gunfire in there. We didn’t even know that he had already shot all the kids. It was already done.”
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While the details of the police response are unclear, a timeline has emerged that shows that the standoff lasted more than an hour.
According to police reports, officers and the gunman exchanged gunfire outside the school at 11:32 a.m. The gunman did not appear to be injured and walked through an unlocked back door at the school. Police believe that he entered a classroom that was connected to other classrooms. He finally found a room full of students, where he then opened fire.
Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCrawtold reportersin a press conference that it took 40 minutes to an hour for a tactical team to shoot the gunman after he entered the school. Later, a spokesman say that they were “unable” to give a solid estimate of how long the gunman was in the school.
“He was able to barricade himself inside the classroom,” Lt. Christopher Olivarez, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman, told theLos Angeles Times.
Robb Elementary School.Brandon Bell/Getty Images
What happened next is in dispute.
In an interview withCNN, congressman Tony Gonzalez cited a briefing he received that claimed that there was a “30-minute lull” in the shooting while the gunman was barricaded in the classroom. During that time, he says, the rest of the students were evacuated from the school."
A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told the Associated Press that officers were unable to breach the classroom door, and finally had to get a staff member to open the room with a key.
But police agencies insist that they worked as quickly as possible to neutralize the threat and minimize casualties.
“The bottom line is law enforcement was there,” McCraw told reporters. “They did engage immediately. They did contain the gunman in the classroom.”
At 1:06 p.m. — a full 94 minutes after the gunman entered the school — authorities finally declared that he was “in police custody.” That statement was quickly amended to reflect that the gunman had been killed.
Spokespersons for the Uvalde Police, the FBI, and Border Patrol did not immediately return PEOPLE’s calls for comment.
source: people.com
