A6 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, MAY 28 , 2022
Texas school shootingsituation that may arise,” the post
said.
The state-mandated course cur-
riculum a dvises that, “In the event
of an active school attack, school-
based law enforcement officers
should do the best they can to fill
the gap until other first respond-
ers can arrive.” An arriving offi-
cer’s “first priority is to move in
and confront the attacker,” even if
that officer has to act alone, the
guidance says.
The Te xas legislature in 2019
approved a measure that required
such training for all school police
officers. The curriculum teaches
officers about Columbine and the
shift in police response tactics
since then, as well as the mass
shooting at a high school in Park-
land, Fla., in 2018. It notes that an
armed school resource officer re-
mained outside the Parkland highschool rather than confronting
the gunman, bringing criticism
upon himself and his department.
“First responders to the active
shooter scene will usually be re-
quired to place themselves in
harm’s way and display uncom-
mon acts of courage to save the
innocent,” the state’s curriculum
says.
Chris Grollnek, a retired police
officer and active-shooter preven-
tion expert, said he was baffled
that the school officers waited to
confront the gunman while chil-
dren and teachers were inside the
room with him.
“The first responding o fficer — I
don’t care if it’s the deputy dog
cartoon g uy — he g oes in and stops
the shooter. That’s just part of the
job,” Grollnek said. “You’ve got a
ballistic vest. You know what the
kids have? Crayons. You are duty-bound to do something. If some-
one is telling you to stay outside,
you disobey that order.”
In 2020, the city of Uvalde’s
police SWAT team toured school
campuses to interact with stu-
dents and familiarize themselves
in case of an emergency, a ccording
to a department Facebook post.
The department’s 2018 annual re-
port said the SWAT unit had
monthly t actical training s essions,
open to all officers to attend.
Rogelio Martin Muñoz, an
Uvalde defense attorney and for-
mer city council member, said Fri-
day that Uvalde “isn’t one of these
communities where you have the
distrust between the police and
the populace. There isn’t an issue
of police violence, police brutality.
The criticism is more about that
they just don’t do a very good job.”
“I’m not saying I take that posi-tion,” Muñoz added. “They’re peo-
ple that are trying to do a good job
that are probably underpaid.”
Sara Spector, who worked as a
prosecutor in Uvalde about a dec-
ade ago, said officers in the area
tend to be both underpaid and
undertrained. “They’re asked to
do something that you would ex-
pect to see out o f a New York Police
Department or a Dallas Police De-
partment.” said Spector, who is
now an attorney in Midland, Te x.
But “it’s a different world, espe-
cially as you get into less affluent
rural communities.”
Abbott said Friday that he is
seeking a full examination of the
law enforcement response.Tim Craig and Teo Armus in Uvalde,
Tex., and Timothy Bella and Nick
Miroff in Washington contributed to
this report.JOSHUA LOTT/THE WASHINGTON POST
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven C. McCraw, second from left, at a Friday news conference in Uvalde, Tex.BY STEVE THOMPSON,
ROBERT KLEMKO
AND SILVIA FOSTER-FRAUThe police response to the Texas
school massacre was led by the
chief of a six-officer police depart-
ment that oversees about eight
schools. The first officers on the
scene were from the Uvalde city
police force, which has a p art-time
SWAT team and about 40 officers
on the payroll.
Policing experts said it makes
sense that the school police chief
was i n charge, g iven that it was h is
campus and he knows the safety
protocols.
But authorities made clear Fri-
day that many other things went
wrong as those small police de-
partments were joined by state,
local and federal law enforcement
agencies in the town of 16,000.
Officers waited nearly an hour in-
side Robb Elementary School be-
fore a group stormed into the
classroom and confronted 18-
year-old Salvador Rolando Ra-
mos. At that point, police say, offi-
cers with Customs and Border
Protection s hot a nd killed t he gun-
man, who had slain 19 children
and two teachers and wounded 17
others.
State officials have offered con-
tradictory and partial accounts of
the s low r esponse, w hich included
police forcing parents away from
the school and subduing them as
they pleaded with officers to go in.
Te xas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and
others initially said officers had
responded quickly a nd saved lives.
Officials now say the school-sys-
tem police chief erred by deciding
the gunman had shifted from an
active shooter to a “barricaded
subject,” and making no effort to
break down the door and get in-
side.
An off-duty Border Patrol tacti-
cal agent was the first to arrive
outside the classroom and “basi-
cally said let’s get this done,” ac-
cording to a U.S. Customs and
Border Protection official who
spoke on t he condition of a nonym-
ity to share preliminary details of
the investigation. “They have not
told me they were frustrated,” the
official said of other border patrol
agents who converged. “But they
told me it was hard to discern who
was in charge.”
Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, chief
of the Uvalde Consolidated Inde-
pendent School D istrict Police De-
partment, who was the incident
commander, did not respond to
requests for comment Friday. A
spokeswoman for the Uvalde Po-
lice Department referred inqui-
ries to the Te xas Department of
Public Safety, and requests to the
local d istrict attorney’s o ffice w ent
unanswered.
“We needed the help ASAP for
our kids, and it wasn’t there,”
Amanda Flores, who said she
knew all 21 victims, said at a me-
morial Friday on Main Street. “I
saw those parents running, want-
ing to go g et t heir children and t he
police tackling the parents, and
that should have never happened.”
Since the Columbine school
massacre in 1999, many police de-
partments have trained officers to
go after an attacker as soon as
possible, to minimize the number
of teachers and children shot. Be-
fore then, guidance often empha-
sized waiting for specially trained
tactical officers with specialized
equipment.
In March, the school district
police hosted a ctive-shooter train-
ing at Uvalde High School, a ccord-
ing to a post on the agency’s Face-
book page. “Our overall goal is to
train every Uvalde area law en-
forcement officer so that we can
prepare as best as possible for any‘Acts of courage’
didn’t materialize
Delayed police response
didn’t square with state
active-shooter trainingthrough the same door, McCraw
said, and more would follow later.
Of those first three officers, he
said, “two received grazing
wounds... while the door was
closed.”
More gunfire continued to ring
out over the minutes that would
follow, McCraw said. And more
officers soon arrived, he said.
“A t 12:03, officers continue to
arrive in the hallway,” McCraw
said. “A nd there were as many as
19 officers at that time in that
hallway.”
Yet more than 45 minutes
elapsed before any officers finally
made it inside, he said, something
they accomplished only by using
keys from a janitor because “both
doors were locked.”
In Uvalde, the emerging ac-
counts of the response have only
led to further pain. Ruben Mon-
temayor Mata, whose great-
granddaughter Alexandria Rubio
was killed, stood in front of a
cross honoring her on Friday and
seethed at what he saw outside
the school during the shooting.
The agents, he said, were “put-
ting their vest on, grabbing their
rifles and walking — Walking!”
Montemayor Mata said, as he
broke down in tears. “They were
young people. Why couldn’t they
be running?”
He said the gunman “only had
a rifle and ammunition,” and they
had dozens of officers who could
surround the school or try to
distract the attacker.
Rodriguez, who lost his grand-
daughter Tess Mata, was also
pained by what he learned about
the police behavior.
“It hurts to think there are
many things that they didn’t do,”
he added.
For now, though, he said he
was focused on supporting his
grieving family, driving from his
home in a rural area 30 miles
away to offer to shuttle them
around. While the family was
offered the chance to view his
granddaughter’s body, Rodriguez
said he didn’t want to. He feared
the 10-year-old had been shot in
the head and didn’t want to see
her face punctured by bullet
holes.
“It’s not going to bring her
back,” Rodriguez said. “I just went
home and said some prayers.
That’s the best thing to do.”Berman reported from Washington,
and Tim Craig and Teo Armus from
Uvalde, Tex. Silvia Foster-Frau,
Timothy Bella, Kim Bellware, Meryl
Kornfield and Nick Miroff contributed
to this report.accidentally shot by officers who
were attempting to hit the gun-
man, Sgt. Erick Estrada, a spokes-
man for the Department of Public
Safety, said that “as of now there
is no indication that occurred.”
Officials have previously said
the gunman shot his grandmoth-
er in the face before heading to
the school and crashing his truck
nearby. The gunman’s grand-
mother survived the shooting and
called police, authorities say.
McCraw said that after the
crash, the gunman quickly began
firing shots — toward two men at
a nearby funeral home and then
at the school. At 11:30 a.m., Mc-
Craw said, police had received a
911 call telling them about the
crash and an armed man.
The timeline once the gunman
arrived at the school underscores
how much the official narrative
has been recast again and again.
Officials initially said he ex-
changed gunfire with a school
police officer outside the school
before going in. Then, on Wednes-
day, McCraw said the gunman
encountered that officer but no
gunshots were exchanged. On
Thursday, another official with
his agency said there was no
confrontation at all and the gun-
man never encountered an offi-
cer.
On Friday, McCraw offered a
fourth iteration of what hap-
pened, saying that a school police
officer was not on campus but
heard the 911 call about an armed
man there and drove over. But,
McCraw said, the officer “drove
right by the suspect,” who was
lurking behind a vehicle, and
instead “sped to what he thought
was the man with a gun” near the
back of the school.
That man, McCraw said, was a
teacher.
The gunman made it in unim-
peded by 11:33 a.m., using a door
that had apparently been
propped open by a teacher, Mc-
Craw said. He was inside within
five minutes of arriving, in Mc-
Craw’s account on Friday; a day
earlier, his agency had said the
gunman remained outside, firing
his weapon, for 12 minutes.
Once the gunman got inside
the school, McCraw said Friday,
he quickly began firing into a
classroom, unleashing “more
than 100 rounds” at that time.
The gunman, he said, was carry-
ing more than 1,600 rounds in
total.
Police soon followed behind. At
11:35 a.m., two minutes after the
gunman entered the school, three
Uvalde police officers went inbut did not identify either of
them.
By 12:51 p.m., the gunshots
were reported over emergency
medical services audio. Police an-
nounced a short time later that
they had stopped the attacker.
The attacker was in a closet
inside one of the classrooms and
came out firing at police as Bor-
der Patrol tactical agents entered
the room behind a ballistic shield,
according to a U.S. Customs and
Border Protection official. An off-
duty tactical agent who arrived in
the hallway outside the class-
room around 12:15 p.m., where
local police and other officers
were assembled, described the
classroom as “quiet,” said the offi-
cial, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity to share prelimi-
nary details of the investigation.
The agent said it was hard to
determine “who was in charge,”
the official said, and the first
Border Patrol agent there began
planning how to make entry. The
agent said he did not hear shots
fired inside the classroom during
the period when officers had sent
for a key to open the classroom,
the official said.
Within minutes of getting the
key, they were inside, the official
said, and the gunman came out
firing at them. They returned fire,
the official said, killing him. In-
side the classroom, the official
said, agents saw children huddled
together. Some were still alive,
the official said, but many were
dead.
When asked Friday whether
any children in Uvalde had beenlater charged with child neglect.
A state commission later faulted
several others there for dawdling
rather than pursuing the shooter.
In 2016, a gunman opened fire
inside the Pulse nightclub in Or-
lando, but police stopped actively
pursuing him when he retreated
into a bathroom with wounded
victims, leading to an hours-long
standoff. Police later defended
that response by saying the gun-
man had stopped firing, so the
scene had shifted from an active
shooter to a barricaded attacker
with hostages.
McCraw’s narrative on Friday
was marked by harrowing depic-
tions of children pleading with
police to come and help them.
He described numerous 911
calls that were made by students
inside adjoining classrooms, beg-
ging for rescue and reporting that
“multiple” people were dead.
A female student first called
911 nearly half an hour after the
gunman entered the school, Mc-
Craw said, and then called back
several times. A student in a
nearby classroom called a little
later, but “hung up when another
student told her to hang up,”
McCraw said. One student called
a short time after to report that
the gunman “shot the door,” Mc-
Craw said.
By 12:47 p.m. — more than an
hour after the gunman first went
into the school — a fourth-grade
student made a plea to 911.
“Please send police now,” the stu-
dent said, according to McCraw.
He said both of the children who
called 911 survived the shooting,gun rights.
It remains unclear whether
McCraw’s account on Friday will
hold up or be amended further. In
his telling, the crucial mistake
made by police at the scene was
choosing not to pursue the gun-
man and instead to treat him as
not threatening further loss of
life. That broke with a protocol
that has been the norm nation-
wide since the Columbine High
School attack in 1999, rules that
are supposed to guide responders
in Te xas, he said.
The commander on the scene
determined that the situation
had “transitioned from an active
shooter to a barricaded subject,”
McCraw said, so police did not try
to break into the classroom soon-
er. The on-site commander, Mc-
Craw said, believed “there was
time and there were no more
children at risk.”
McCraw said the person in
charge at t he scene was the school
district’s police chief, Pedro
“Pete” Arredondo. He did not
respond to requests for comment
Friday.
“Obviously, based upon the in-
formation we have, there were
children in that classroom that
were at risk,” McCraw said. “A nd
it was, in fact, still an active-
shooter situation, and not a barri-
caded subject.”
The law enforcement response
in Uvalde carries grim echoes of
previous mass violence. After a
gunman opened fire in a Park-
land, Fla., high school in 2018, a
sheriff’s deputy did not go inside
— for which he was assailed, andable task of burying child after
child.
“They could have saved her,”
said Joe Rodriguez, 64, before
dropping flowers off at a wooden
cross erected to honor his grand-
daughter, Tess Mata. “They could
have saved some lives.”
The victims killed Tuesday in-
cluded Tess, a 10-year-old known
to many as Tessy; Amerie Jo Gar-
za, a 10-year-old honor-roll stu-
dent; Eliahana Cruz Torres, a
10-year-old softball player; and 16
other children. They also includ-
ed two fourth-grade teachers —
Eva Mireles, 44, and Irma Garcia,
- Police say an additional 17
people were injured.
Speaking three days after the
massacre, McCraw outlined a se-
ries of missteps, some still unex-
plained, in how police responded.
He said 19 officers had made it
into a school hallway — only to
have nearly 45 minutes elapse
before law enforcement finally
confronted the gunman, break-
ing with the widely accepted po-
lice practice of pursuing active
shooters. While police waited,
McCraw said, children trapped
inside called 911 again and again,
pleading for help; at one point
gunshots could be heard. Even
before the shooter made it inside,
McCraw said, a school police offi-
cer who was not on campus was
summoned by another 911 call,
but “drove right by the suspect.”
Officials have provided fre-
quently shifting depictions of
how the tragedy unfolded, an-
nouncing details they have later
changed or withdrawn entirely.
Speaking later on Friday at a n ews
conference, Gov. Greg Abbott (R),
who had previously praised the
swiftness of the law enforcement
response, said he was given incor-
rect information.
“I am livid about what hap-
pened,” he said, after a lengthy
recitation of state services to
which the grieving families
would be entitled.
Although he said in Uvalde
that he would seek state action to
limit the chances of a future
massacre, Abbott released a pre-
recorded message to the National
Rifle Association’s convention on
Friday in Houston rebuffing calls
for new gun laws.
“Thousands of laws on the
books ... have not stopped mad-
men from carrying out evil acts,”
Abbott said. Former president
Donald Trump made his own
appearance at the NRA conven-
tion, offering a similar defense of
SHOOTING FROM A
Texas police chose not pursue the shooter, as parents outside begged them to
COURTESY OF PETE LUNA/UVALDE LEADER-NEWS
The scene at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday, shortly after a gunman entered the building. It took
more than an hour after the killer’s breach of the school for responders to confront and kill him.