By JAKE BLEIBERG, JIM VERTUNO and ELLIOT SPAGAT
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — It was 11:28 a.m. when the Ford pickup slammed right into a ditch behind the low-slung Texas college and the motive force jumped out carrying an AR-15-style rifle.
Twelve minutes after that, authorities say, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos was within the hallways of Robb Elementary School. Soon he entered a fourth-grade classroom. And there, he killed 19 schoolchildren and two academics in a still-unexplained spasm of violence.
At 12:58 p.m., regulation enforcement radio chatter mentioned Ramos had been killed and the siege was over.
What occurred in these 90 minutes, in a working-class neighborhood close to the sting of the little city of Uvalde, has fueled mounting public anger and scrutiny over regulation enforcement’s response to Tuesday’s rampage.
“They say they rushed in,” mentioned Javier Cazares, whose fourth-grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed within the assault, and who raced to the varsity because the bloodbath unfolded. “We didn’t see that.”
On Thursday, authorities largely ignored questions on why officers had not been in a position to cease the shooter sooner, with Victor Escalon, regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, telling reporters he had “taken all those questions into consideration” and would provide updates later.
The media briefing, known as by Texas security officers to make clear the timeline of the assault, offered bits of beforehand unknown info. But by the point it ended, it had added to the troubling questions surrounding the assault, together with in regards to the time it took police to succeed in the scene and confront the gunman, and the obvious failure to lock a faculty door he entered.
After two days of offering typically conflicting info, investigators mentioned {that a} college district police officer was not inside the varsity when Ramos arrived, and, opposite to their earlier stories, the officer had not confronted Ramos outdoors the constructing.
Instead, they sketched out a timeline notable for unexplained delays by regulation enforcement.
After crashing his truck, Ramos fired on two folks popping out of a close-by funeral residence, Escalon mentioned. He then entered the varsity ”unobstructed” via an apparently unlocked door at about 11:40 a.m.
But the primary cops didn’t arrive on the scene till 12 minutes after the crash and didn’t enter the varsity to pursue the shooter till 4 minutes after that. Inside, they have been pushed again by gunfire from Ramos and took cowl, Escalon mentioned.
The disaster got here to an finish after a bunch of Border Patrol tactical officers entered the varsity roughly an hour later, at 12:45 p.m., mentioned Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Travis Considine. They engaged in a shootout with the gunman, who was holed up within the fourth-grade classroom. Moments earlier than 1 p.m., he was useless.
Escalon mentioned that in that point, the officers known as for backup, negotiators and tactical groups, whereas evacuating college students and academics.
Ken Trump, president of the consulting agency National School Safety and Security Services, mentioned the size of the timeline raised questions.
“Based on best practices, it’s very difficult to understand why there were any types of delays, particularly when you get into reports of 40 minutes and up of going in to neutralize that shooter,” he mentioned.
Many different particulars of the case and the response remained murky. The motive for the bloodbath — the nation’s deadliest college capturing since Newtown, Connecticut, virtually a decade in the past — remained beneath investigation, with authorities saying Ramos had no identified legal or psychological well being historical past.
During the siege, pissed off onlookers urged cops to cost into the varsity, in line with witnesses.
“Go in there! Go in there!” ladies shouted on the officers quickly after the assault started, mentioned Juan Carranza, 24, who watched the scene from outdoors a home throughout the road.
Carranza mentioned the officers ought to have entered the varsity sooner: “There were more of them. There was just one of him.”
Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz didn’t give a timeline however mentioned repeatedly that the tactical officers from his company who arrived on the college didn’t hesitate. He mentioned they moved quickly to enter the constructing, lining up in a “stack” behind an agent holding up a protect.
“What we wanted to make sure is to act quickly, act swiftly, and that’s exactly what those agents did,” Ortiz instructed Fox News.
But a regulation enforcement official mentioned that after within the constructing, the brokers had hassle breaching the classroom door and needed to get a workers member to open the room with a key. The official spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of he was not approved to speak publicly in regards to the investigation.
Department of Public Safety spokesman Lt. Christopher Olivarez instructed CNN that investigators have been making an attempt to ascertain whether or not the classroom was, actually, locked or barricaded not directly.
Cazares mentioned that when he arrived, he noticed two officers outdoors the varsity and about 5 others escorting college students out of the constructing. But 15 or 20 minutes handed earlier than the arrival of officers with shields, geared up to confront the gunman, he mentioned.
As extra dad and mom flocked to the varsity, he and others pressed police to behave, Cazares mentioned. He heard about 4 gunshots earlier than he and the others have been ordered again to a parking zone.
“A lot of us were arguing with the police, ‘You all need to go in there. You all need to do your jobs.’ Their response was, ‘We can’t do our jobs because you guys are interfering,’” Cazares mentioned.
As for the armed college officer, he was driving close by however was not on campus when Ramos crashed his truck, in line with a regulation enforcement official who was not approved to debate the case and spoke of situation of anonymity.
Investigators have concluded that college officer was not positioned between the varsity and Ramos, leaving him unable to confront the shooter earlier than he entered the constructing, the regulation enforcement official mentioned.
Michael Dorn, government director of Safe Havens International, which works to make colleges safer, cautioned that it’s exhausting to get a transparent understanding of the info quickly after a capturing.
“The information we have a couple of weeks after an event is usually quite different than what we get in the first day or two. And even that is usually quite inaccurate,” Dorn mentioned. For catastrophic occasions, “you’re usually eight to 12 months out before you really have a decent picture.”
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Bleiberg reported from Dallas.
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More on the varsity capturing in Uvalde, Texas: https://apnews.com/hub/school-shootings
Source: www.bostonherald.com”