May 26, 2022, 04:10pm
As loved ones grieve for 19 children and two teachers killed at an elementary school in rural Texas on Tuesday, increasing anger is being directed at police who responded to the massacre, after authorities said the rampage may have continued for up to an hour after police first arrived on scene.
A police officer walks past a makeshift memorial for the victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting. The photo was taken by Chan Khan.
The Texas Department of Public Safety said Thursday that police arrived almost immediately after the 18-year-old shooter entered the Robb Elementary School building, but were fired upon and held back from engaging the shooter because they lacked tactical equipment.
It took a Border Patrol tactical unit about an hour to enter the building and kill the shooter.
A Texas Department of Public safety officer told a San Antonio TV station Thursday morning that some local police officers entered the school to rescue their own children while the shooter was still in the building.
Parents are begging local officers to enter the building, and in some cases they are being arrested for interfering with police.
The actions of a school security officer they initially said engaged with the shooter outside the school have been given conflicting reports.
The school safety officer was not on campus and the shooter entered the school unimpeded.
Here you can find a full timeline of the events.
Police accounts suggested that the shooter barricaded himself in the single classroom where he massacred his victims. A law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told the Associated Press that Border Patrol agents had to get a school worker to open the classroom door.
Angeli Rose Gomez told the Wall Street Journal that the police were doing nothing after she ran into the school to rescue her two children. They weren't running or going in there.
The shooter was not known to law enforcement before the rampage, which was the deadliest at a U.S. elementary school in nearly a decade. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the shooter posted messages on Facebook before the attack saying he was going to shoot his grandmother and another saying he was going to shoot an elementary school. Police said that the shooter's grandmother survived after being flown to a hospital.
The police response to the shooting at a Florida high school has been compared to the 1999 mass shooting at a Colorado high school. While an officer assigned to protect a high school was charged with child neglect for allegedly hiding during the massacre, the response to Columbine was plagued by poor communication.
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The residents of Uvalde are upset with the response to the shooting.
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