UWALDE, TX – Sneaky Talk in a fourth grader called the police in a whisper. Around her, in There were still bodies in room 112 of Robb Elementary. of her classmates and scores of fired shells fired by a militant who It was already was at school for half hour.
She whispered to the 911 operator: just the afternoon that she was in Class with shooter. She called back again. As well as again. “Please send the police now,” she pleaded.
But they were already there waiting in school corridor just outside. And they were there for more than an hour.
The police officers carried out off as they listened to sporadic gunfire from behind door, ordered the commander on the spot not to rush the couple of connected classrooms, where the shooter locked himself in and started shooting shortly after 11:30.
“It was wrong decision period”, director of State Police, Stephen S. McCraw, said on Friday After Transcript Reading of children calls 911 and from the timeline of police inactivity for nearly 90 minutes of horror in primary school in Uvalde, Texas.
In a few days of changing explanations and conflicting reports, disclosure answered many of in basic Questions about how massacre took place. But they raised even more painful opportunity that the police made more and faster, not all of those who died – 19 children and two teachers would have perished.
Mr. McCraw’s frank and sudden revelation that the police commander had decided not to enter the classroom, even as the shooter continued to fire, set off an explosion. of cries and emotional questions. AT times, Mr. McCraw struggled to be heard. On other occasions he seemed depressed, his voice break.
Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who previously in It was said in the week that the police “showed amazing courage in running into the fire.” on Friday at news conference in Uvalde that he was “misleading” about events and the police response, adding that he was “absolutely furious”.
Mr Abbott who hours previously abandoned plans speak at the convention of the National Rifle Association in Houston told reporters that state lawmakers review tragedy and determine what’s gone wrong. “Are we waiting for the adoption of laws out of it’s destructive crime? The answer is yes,” he said.
To children at Robb Elementary, Tuesday started like a day of holidays and special treats — movies in classes, photos with family in front of glitter curtain and award ceremonies for students graduate year in two days when relatives proudly held hands as they walked down corridors.
Gemma Lopez was gym class that morning, and an awards ceremony. She was watching Jungle Cruise. with her fourth grade classmates in Room 108. Some of students graduated up workothers played by “doing what we do,” as she put it.
Then she heard a loud bang in in distance, like firecrackers. She realized that something wrong because she saw the police outside class window. And the claps got louder.
“Everyone was scared and everything, and I told them to shut up,” said 10-year-old Gemma. One of her classmates thought it might be a prank and laughed. Gemma said she silenced her. They made exercises for this is. She turned out light in the classroom, as she was taught.
“I’ve heard a lot more of shots, and then I cried a little, she said, and my best Sophie’s friend was also crying straight next to me.”
eighteen-year-old shooter who crashed his grandma’s truck truck at 11:28 in the ditch at the school has begun firing outside — more than 20 times, first at passers-by and then in the classroom windows. The Uwalde School District police officer who arrived at the scene did not see the shooter and drove past his.
A few minutes later, the shooter was already inside and opened side the door that should were locked but were opened by the teacher who gone outside get her cell phone.
Jasmine Carrillo, 29, worked in Cafeteria with about 40 second-classmates and two teachers, when attack began. The light went out – part of school-wide isolation, which turned into effect.
Once he entered the fourth grade of the building said Ms. Carrillo, the shooter beat and kicked on Door of her 10-year-old son Mario class, demanding to be let in in. But he couldn’t open the locked door.
Instead, he moved on to others.
In the combined classrooms, room 111 and room 112, a couple of teachers, Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia, also showed movie”Lilo and Stitch” as the students finished up their lessons. One of the teachers moved to close the door and block off the classroom from the corridor. But the shooter was already there.
Mia Cerrillo, 11, watched as her teacher retreated into the classroom as the gunman followed her. He is hot one teacher first, and then another. She said he shot a lot of students in my class, and then went to the next one and opened fire- said her grandfather, 71-year-old Jose Velos, telling the story of the girl.
Then he started firing furiously.
scary echo of at least 100 shots were fired at the school. children in classes and more of the teachers there were shot and fell to the ground. It was 11:33
Not all of in children were killed inside in this terrible moment. Several survived and huddled in fear next to your helpless friends. One of in children fell on Mia’s breasts as she lay on land, her grandfather said. Afraid that he would return to her class, Mia said she took blood of classmate who fell dead and rubbed it all over herself. Then she played dead herself.
Two minutes after the shooter first joined a couple of classrooms, several police officers from the Uvalde Police Department broke into the school. Pair of the officers approached the locked door to the classrooms as gunfire was heard inside. Two were injured—abrasions, as their injuries would later be described—when the bullets pierced the door and hit them in hallway.
Minutes passed. Mia heard the shooter enter the room. next door and put on “really sad music”as she described it to her family.
Inside the premises, the shooter fired 16 shots. more shots. Other officers arrived outside. By noon there were 19 officers from different departments. in porches and many more outside school.
By 12:10, one of Students who called 911 reported that eight or nine students were still alive, Mr. McCraw said.
Parents gathered near the garden and around Uvalde, a close-knit community of 15000 west of San Antonio, desperately searching for any word of them children inside, more and more maddened by the silence of sent messages that were not answered.
“I prayed with four ladies that everything will be fine,” said 50-year-old Lupe Leia, 8-year-old son, Samuel, was inside. In the middle of pandemonium, his wife Claudia sent a message to her child’s teacher: “Are the kids okay?”
In less than a minute, she received a reply that she wanted: Yes, we are.
Another parents became more and more angry, calling on the officers who seemed to be loitering around to finish the shooting, which they clearly saw and heard. on.
But the commander at the scene, Chief Pete Arredondo of Uwalde School District Police Department determined that nature of the situation is not call for officers rush in as active shooter training prescribed for decades after the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.
Mr McCraw said the commander determined that the shooter was no longer active shooter, and the barricaded suspect – “that we had time, children in risk,” he said. The commander ordered up shields and other specialized tactical gear enter the room.
Long painful minutes they waited for It.
“They were there without proper equipmentJavier Casares said. who arrived in anguish in elementary school, panic for his daughter Jackie Cazares, who was locked inside. He watched how shields were delivered in slowly and not at the same time. “One guy came in with one and a few minutes later another one came in,” he said.
Chief Arredondo did not respond to inquiries for comment on Friday.
By 12:15 pm, specialized border guards arrived at the school, driving about 40 minutes from where they were near the border. with Mexico.
Federal agents arrived on the scene. of chaos – people pulling children out of windows while the local police, with only pistols and a few rifles, tried to secure the perimeter. Specially trained agents did not understand why they left wait, law enforcement official said.
At 12:19 another girl from room 111 called, but they quickly hung up. up when the other student told her. Two minutes later another call appeared and three shots were heard.
More time has passed. Other call came in 911 from one of two girls at 12:47. By that time children was trapped with shooter for over hour.
Young woman in Room 112 pleaded, “Please send the police now,” according to the transcript read by Mr. McCraw.
A few minutes later, around 12:50, specially trained Border Guard officers opened the locked door. with the keys to the school janitor and broke into the room, firing 27 times inside the class and killing shooter.
Another eight spent cartridges were found in corridor, fired by law enforcement officers. During the course of carnage, shooter shot 142 timesMr McCraw said. using rifle Type AR-15, one of two he bought a few days earlier with debit card, just after his 18th birthday.
jackie, who always wanted be the center of attention, “little diva” to her family died in shooting along with his classmate and cousin Annabelle Rodriguez, a quiet, honorable student.
Mia, 11-year-an old woman whose classmate died next to her, survived, as did both of them of in children who quietly called 911.
But Mia family couldn’t hug her because of stuck bullet fragments in her back as well as in in back of her headsaid Aunt Kimberly Veloz. She needs to see a specialist in San Antonio to remove them but she doesn’t want leave the house she said.
“She still thinks he will come and pick her up,” Ms Veloz said. “We told her that he dead. But she doesn’t understand.”
Mario, 10-year-old whose mother worked in canteen, refuses to eat since Tuesday and cannot sleep at night.
Academic year in uvalde over now, but Mario mother, Miss Carrillo, told her son I’m afraid of another attack want go back to school.
She should have been honest with him what friends he is made at Robb’s elementary school, his friend José Flores, the classmates he expected to see again in autumn, everyone is gone.
“They are with Lord, she told him.
Francis Robles, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs as well as Serge F. Kovaleski made a report. Susan S. Beachy Kirsten Noyes and Jack Begg contributed research.
