Police Response Blasted In Texas Shooting That Left 19 Children Dead

Topline

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 the scene.

A police officer walks past a makeshift memorial for the shooting victims at Robb Elementary School … [+] in Uvalde, Texas, on May 26, 2022.

CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images

Key Facts

Victor Escalon of the Texas Department of Public Safety said Thursday police arrived almost immediately after an 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.

Escalon said it took about an hour for a Border Patrol tactical unit to arrive, 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—what role police might have taken to widely evacuate students remains unclear.

Video from outside the school showed parents begging local officers to enter the building, and in some cases being detained for allegedly interfering with police.

Authorities have given several conflicting reports about how Tuesday’s events transpired, such as the actions of a school security officer they initially said engaged with the shooter outside the school.

Escalon said Thursday earlier accounts were inaccurate—a school safety officer was not on campus and the shooter entered the school unobstructed.

Find a full timeline of the events as we know them here.

What We Don’t Know

Early police accounts suggested the shooter heavily barricaded himself in the single classroom where he carried out the massacre, but that remains unclear. A law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told the Associated Press that Border Patrol agents had to get a school worker to unlock the classroom door with a key.

Crucial Quote

“The police were doing nothing,” Angeli Rose Gomez, who was briefly handcuffed by U.S. Marshals before she was freed and ran into the school to rescue her two children, told the Wall Street Journal. “They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere.”

Key Background

Authorities have repeatedly said 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 Governor Greg Abbott (R) said the shooter posted messages on Facebook prior to the attack saying he was going to shoot his grandmother, before sending another confirming he had shot his grandmother and a third declaring: “I’m going to shoot an elementary school.” Meta, Facebook’s parent company, claimed the shooter made the remarks in private messages. Police said the shooter’s grandmother survived after being airlifted to a hospital.

Tangent

The police response has drawn comparisons to the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado and a 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The response to Columbine was plagued by poor communication while an officer assigned to protect Marjory Stoneman Douglas High was charged with child negligence for allegedly hiding during the massacre.