Texas school shooting
Police shouldn't have waited to storm classrooms, says Texas official
Children called 911 many times as officers waited nearly an hour outside before acting
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UVALDE (Texas) • Frantic children called 911 at least half a dozen times from the Texas classrooms where a massacre was unfolding, pleading for the police to intervene, as some 20 officers waited in the hallway for nearly an hour before entering and killing the gunman, the authorities said on Friday.
At least two children placed several emergency calls from a pair of adjoining fourth-grade classrooms after 18-year-old Salvador Ramos entered last Tuesday with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, according to Colonel Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Ramos, who had driven to Robb Elementary School from his home after shooting and wounding his grandmother there, went on to kill 19 children and two teachers in the deadliest school shooting in the United States in nearly a decade.
"He's in Room 112," a girl whispered on the phone at 12.03pm, over 45 minutes before a US Border Patrol-led tactical team finally stormed in and ended the siege.
The on-site commander, the chief of the school district's police department in Uvalde, believed at the time that Ramos was barricaded inside and that the children were no longer at immediate risk, giving police time to prepare, Col McCraw said.
"With the benefit of hindsight, of course it was not the right decision," he added. "It was the wrong decision, period."
The disclosure of local law enforcement's delay in pursuing the teenage gunman armed with a semi-automatic rifle came as the nation's leading gun rights advocacy group, the National Rifle Association, opened its annual convention 440km away in Houston.
Texas Governor Gregg Abbott, a Republican and staunch gun rights proponent who addressed the meeting in a pre-recorded video, seized on apparent police lapses in Uvalde, telling a news conference later that he was misled and "livid about what happened".
He denied that newly enacted Texas gun laws, including a controversial measure removing licensing requirements for carrying a concealed weapon, had "any relevancy" to Tuesday's bloodshed.
He suggested state lawmakers focus renewed attention on addressing mental illness.
Even as the shooting reopened the intractable, long-running national debate over easy access to military-style weapons in the US, the latest chronology of the Uvalde school attack stirred public dismay, including among the very officials reporting it.
Timeline of calls made to 911
UVALDE (Texas) • At least two girls cowering in their classrooms at Robb Elementary School in Texas called the police emergency number 911 during the massacre, a law enforcement official said on Friday.
Here is the 911 emergency call timeline outlined by Colonel Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
12.03pm: The first call comes from a little girl who says she is in Room 112. "She identified herself and whispered, 'He's in Room 112'," Col McCraw said, without identifying her.
12.10pm: The same girl calls back and says there are multiple people dead.
12.13pm: The girl calls again.
12.16pm: She calls back and says there are eight to nine pupils alive.
12.19pm: A 911 call is made from the phone of another child, in Room 111. She hung up when another pupil told her to do so, Col McCraw said.
12.21pm: The authorities hear on the 911 call that three shots are fired. (It is not clear which 911 call they were listening to at that time.)
12.36pm: A 911 call lasts for 21 seconds. Unspecified time: The initial caller calls back and is told to stay on the line and be very quiet. She tells 911 "that he shot the door".
12.43pm and 12.47pm: "She asked 911 to please send the police now," Col McCraw said.
12.46pm: She says she can hear the police next door.
12.50pm: Shots can be heard on the 911 call.
12.51pm: The 911 call is very loud and it sounds like officers are moving children out of the room. "At that time, the first child that called was outside before the caller cut off," Col McCraw said.
REUTERS
Col McCraw, whose voice choked with emotion at times, said: "We're here to report the facts, not to defend what was done or the actions taken."
Some of the mostly nine-and 10-year-old pupils trapped with the gunman survived the massacre, including at least two who called 911, Col McCraw said.
There were at least eight calls from the classrooms to 911 between 12.03pm, a half hour after Ramos first entered the building, and 12.50pm, when Border Patrol agents and the police burst in and shot Ramos dead.
It was unclear whether officers at the scene were aware of those calls as they waited, Col McCraw added.
A girl called at 12.16pm and told police that there were still "eight to nine" pupils alive, he said.
Three shots were heard during a call made at 12.21pm.
The girl who made the first call implored the operator to "please send the police now" at 12.43pm, and again four minutes later.
Officers went in three minutes after that final call, according to Col McCraw, when the tactical team used a janitor's key to open the locked classroom door.
Videos that emerged on Thursday showed anguished parents outside the school, urging police to storm the building during the attack, with some having to be restrained by the police.
REUTERS
