As officers amassed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, they wrongly believed the shooting was over and had shifted to a "barricaded subject" scenario.
As a result of this decision, they elected to wait for backup and extra equipment before charging the classroom where gunman Salvador Ramos was locked in with scores of terrified students. The potentially fatal delay may have led to 19 students and two teachers being massacred inside.
"Of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision, period. There's no excuse for that," Steven C McCraw, Director and Colonel of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said at a news conference yesterday. As many as 19 officers were waiting in a hallway outside the classroom early on, police said, but an incident commander, the head of the school district's police force, had determined "there was no more threat to the children."
"In retrospect, from where I'm sitting right now, clearly there were kids in the room," Mr McCraw said. "Clearly they're at risk."
This story is from the May 28, 2022 edition of The Independent.
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This story is from the May 28, 2022 edition of The Independent.
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