More than a dozen of the 33 children and three teachers trapped in the Texas school during the massacre were alive and awaiting rescue for...
More than a dozen of the 33 children and three teachers trapped in the Texas school during the massacre were alive and awaiting rescue for an hour as cops scrambled for a key to unlock a classroom door, a review has found.
The terrified victims were stuck inside the building for 77 minutes as bungling officers tried to figure out how to get past a 'steel jamb' entrance to the room Salvador Ramos, 18, was in, the study of video footage showed.
Pete Arredondo, the embattled chief of Uvalde school police, was among the first officers to enter Robb Elementary during the original siege.
But when he and his officers were pushed back - with two injured in the gunfire - he did not let them enter again for another 40 minutes as they waited for better equipment to arrive.
The top cop has been widely panned for his role in delaying his heavily armed force from raiding the building and potentially freeing those who would later be gunned down.
Ramos managed to butcher 19 children and two teachers at the school in the time it took for police to shoot him dead an hour and a half after he broke in last month.
Pete Arredondo, the chief of police of the Uvalde school district, has come under intense criticism for his actions on May 24
US Customs and Border Protection agents (left) are seen alongside local police (center) and sheriff's deputies (right) working to rescue kids from Robb Elementary
Questions have continued to mount about why police didn't engage the shooter more quickly
On Thursday The New York Times revealed a review of video footage which found Arredondo quickly became aware there were still more than a dozen survivors inside the classrooms shooter Ramos had entered.
It is not yet clear just how many more lives would have been saved if the Uvalde police had stormed in when the gunman first began shooting.
The Times also obtained surveillance footage from inside the school, which showed Ramos walking through the empty hallways.
He did not appear to fire until he got to Room 111 and Room 112, and it remains unclear why he chose those classrooms, although it's possible the teacher for 112, Irma Garcia, may have taught Ramos when he was a student.
Garcia died in the shooting, alongside fellow teacher Eva Mireles. The police response has come under intense criticism, and the officers have been condemned for failing to immediately storm the building.
Ramos arrived at the school at 11:30am. He was not shot dead until almost 1pm. One officer can be heard saying, as Arredondo tells them to hold back: 'If there's kids in there, we need to go in there.'
Several shots could be heard inside the classrooms, after a long lull, around 12:21pm. Another says to a sergeant, just before 12:30pm: 'There's a teacher shot in there.'
The sergeant replied: 'I know.' Arredondo himself is believed to be overheard saying: 'We think there are some injuries in there.'
He adds: 'And so you know what we did, we cleared off the rest of the building so we wouldn't have any more, besides what's already in there, obviously.'
He also appears to defend the decision to hold back, saying: 'People are going to ask why we're taking so long. We're trying to preserve the rest of the life.'
Medics and relatives have pointed out every second counts in getting injured people to hospital, especially those bleeding from gunshot wounds.
One teacher, Mireles, 44, died in an ambulance: her husband Ruben Ruiz, one of six uniformed members of the Uvalde school district's police department, said at 11:48am that 'she says she is shot.'
She was not carried out until after the gunman was dead, an hour later. Three children, including Xavier Lopez, 10, died in hospital, having been shot in the back.
'He could have been saved,' said his grandfather, Leonard Sandoval. 'The police did not go in for more than an hour. He bled out.'
Heavily criticized chief of Uvalde school police Pete Arredondo, who was in charge of the response to the massacre, has defended the delayed response: 'Not a single responding officer ever hesitated, even for a moment, to put themselves at risk to save the children.
'We responded to the information that we had and had to adjust to whatever we faced.
'Each time I tried a key I was just praying,' Arredondo told the Texas Tribune. 'The only thing that was important to me at this time was to save as many teachers and children as possible.'
Arredondo, who has been embattled with claims he and the rest of the response team should have acted quicker to get to the injured faster. But on the fateful day, he told his officers to refrain from entering the elementary school until better equipment arrived.
In the first 40 minutes of the mass shooting response, the police chief said he was waiting to receive the set of keys, and for the remainder of the hour and 17 minutes before shooting killer Ramos, he was trying 'dozens of keys' which weren't opening the door.
Arredondo said he called for 'tactical gear' and a sniper while avoiding the doors as he was concerned they may provoke 18-year-old Ramos to shoot his AR-15 style gun, which he bought for himself in the days after his 18th birthday, just a week before he carried out the mass shooting.
Police finally unlocked the door to kill Ramos, but the police chief is under intense scrutiny as many argue that fewer lives would be lost if Ramos was taken down sooner.
The Texas Department of Public Safety is now investigating the shooting and the subsequent police response. The Department is said that Arredondo mistakenly 'treated the shooting as a barricaded suspect incident where law enforcement would typically negotiate with the gunman.
Instead, they say that he should have treated it like an 'active shooter situation', which would see officers prioritize stopping the shooting by killing gunman Ramos or bringing him into custody.
Xavier Lopez, 10, is pictured with his friend Annabell Rodriguez. Both were killed on May 24 - with Lopez dying in hospital
Eva Mireles, 44, was one of two teachers to die in the school shooting. Her husband, a school district police officer, said at 11:48am that she had been shot and was alive. The gunman was not killed until over an hour later. Mireles died in an ambulance en route to hospital
Arredondo learned the gunman's identity, while he was inside, and tried to negotiate with 18-year-old Ramos - but received no response.
'Mr Ramos? Can you hear us, Mr Ramos? Please respond,' said Arredondo, according to the transcript - trying in English and Spanish, but getting no response.
Parents, meanwhile, were begging the officers to go in to the building. One woman rushed in herself and evacuated her own children.
Some of the children were desperately calling 911, begging for help. It is unclear if Arredondo was made aware of their calls.
In room 112, there were 18 students inside, eight of whom were murdered, and two teachers, both of whom were killed.
In room 111, there were 15 children and one teacher. Eleven of the children died, and the teacher, Arnulfo Reyes, was shot but survived.
The gunman's cousin was in a classroom across the hall, but was unharmed.
The police officers were hampered by a stream of failures, including radios that did not work and doors that failed to lock properly.
Ramos, who dropped out of high school last year in the fall of his senior year, bought the two rifles legally, days after turning 18, with $6,000 he saved working at a Wendy's and occasionally doing air-conditioning work for his grandfather.
He also bought a 'hellfire' trigger device, which transforms a semi-automatic into an automatic - but he is not believed to have known how to use it.
The police response is being investigated by both state and federal authorities.
Uvalde's chief of police, Daniel Rodriguez, was on vacation when the shooting happened.
Arredondo has not commented.
No comments