The father of a student who died in the school shooting has slammed Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn after the lawmaker said "finger pointing" at police in the wake of the Robb Elementary school shooting.
The second guessing and finger pointing among state and local law enforcement is destructive. split second decisions are required in complex scenarios. Cornyn said it was easy to criticize with hindsight.
—Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) May 28, 2022
In response, Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jamie was killed when a shooter opened fire at a high school in Florida, called Cornyn "tragically wrong".
My daughter was the second to be murdered. She was shot on the 3rd floor and had her spine severed. She needed more time to make it to safety. He wrote that if not for the failed law enforcement response she and others would be alive today.
—Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) May 29, 2022
There are differing accounts of how long it took police to respond to the shooting that killed 21 people, including 19 children. All of the victims were in the fourth grade classrooms.
Some parents tried to push through law enforcement to get their kids out of the school, but police did not respond.
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredond believed that the shooter was barricaded in an empty classroom and ordered police not to enter.
The delay could have prevented life-saving care from reaching children, according to experts.
Guttenberg told Cronyn that there would be fewer deaths if police responded quicker.
"It is also fair to say that without the failure to act by Senators like you, these shootings may never have happened," he said. "People died because you put the police in a position of being out gunned and they then failed to engage when needed."
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