The topic of law enforcement response to the heinous Uvalde mass school shooting has been a contentious one this week, as more and more reports and analyses come out of the woodwork, shedding new light on the dismal, deadly behavior that was allegedly displayed by local police while Salvador Ramos barricaded himself inside a 4th-grade classroom at Robb Elementary School and brutally gunned down 19 innocent children and 2 beloved teachers.
We have read reports from parents who spoke out and revealed that local law enforcement agents were pepper-spraying, tazing, and even arresting the family members of the victims inside the school, as they begged police to go inside, to do something. Anything.
We have learned, over the last few days, that Ramos stayed barricaded inside that classroom for 40-minutes to an hour, sporadically firing shots, as local police intentionally prevented the special Border Patrol unit from breaching the room — as they instead stood in the hallways of Robb Elementary School, listening to the shots being fired, with a local commander claiming that the threat to the children inside was somehow over.
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that one former Uvalde prosecutor has spoken out and warned, “As an ex-prosecutor from Uvalde, I can say based on my past interactions with Uvalde PD, you will never know the truth about what went down in that school until every inch of video tape is released to the press.”
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The stories, accounts, and reports have been absolutely gut-wrenching, to say the least.
But I’m not so sure anything has truly broken my heart quite like this.
According to unsettling new reporting from Reuters, terrified children inside Robb Elementary School frantically called 911 from their classrooms as the massacre unfolded all around them. These petrified children begged and pleaded for law enforcement to intervene, to save them from the gunman — all while some 20 police officers stood in the hallway of the school, so close but so far, for almost an hour, before breaching the 4th-grade classroom and taking Salvador Ramos out, according to authorities.
Colonel Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, confirmed that at least 2 children placed numerous frantic calls to emergency services from inside the pair of adjoining 4th-grade classrooms as the 18-year-old high school dropout turned gunman entered the room with a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle.
One little girl phoned in at 2:03 p.m., more than 45 minutes before the U.S. Border Patrol-led tactical team stormed the room, engaged the shooter, and shot and killed Ramos, whispering into the call, “He’s in room 112.”
McCraw claimed that the chief of the school district’s police department in Uvalde, Texas, the on-site commander during the massacre, was of the belief that at the time Ramos was barricaded inside the classroom, the immediate risk to the children inside had already disappeared, leaving authorities time to fully prepare.
Reuters reports, “There were at least eight calls from the classrooms to 911 between 12:03 p.m., a half hour after Ramos first entered the building, and 12:50 p.m., when Border Patrol agents and police burst in and shot Ramos dead.”
One child reportedly called 911 at 12:16 p.m. and told police that there were still “eight to nine” students alive, claimed McCraw.
The little girl called again at 12:43 p.m., begging the operator to “please send the police now” and called again just 4 minutes later.
It was 3 minutes after the final frantic call went out that police breached the room after the Border Patrol tactical unit used a janitor’s key to open the locked door and gain access to the classroom.
McCraw claims he is unaware of whether or not officers on the scene were aware of the calls being made from inside the classroom when they made the decision to wait upwards of 40-minutes before breaching the room.
Suffice it to say, I believe there is a lot more truth that has yet to see the light.
Featured image via screen capture
