As an investigation continues into the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old fatally shot 19 children and two teachers, residents were outraged on Thursday at the time it took to stop the mass shooting.
When family members of the students arrived at the school, they were enraged that Ramos was locked in the classroom and that the authorities were not in the school sooner. Some individuals recorded videos of the police who waited outside.
“The police were doing nothing,” said Angeli Rose Gomez, who traveled 40 miles to Robb Elementary, where her children are in second and third grades, after learning about the incident. “They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere.”
Police inside the school were evacuating children and school personnel, as well as calling for backup, according to Victor Escalon, a regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
“They are trying to cover something up,” said Bob Estrada, a resident near the school. “I think the cops were waiting for backup because they didn’t want to go into the school.”
A new timeline shows that the gunman freely entered the building after loitering outside for 12 minutes and opening fire.
Escalon provided a revised timeline of how the now-deceased gunman, Salvador Ramos, allegedly entered the school through an unlocked door, barricaded himself in a classroom, and killed his victims.
“That back door was propped open. It wasn’t supposed to be propped open,” said Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw. “It was supposed to be locked. And certainly, the teacher that went back for her cellphone propped it open again. So that was an access point that the subject used.”
Department of Public Safety officials had previously made reports that Ramos encountered an armed security officer when he arrived at the school. On Thursday, Escalon stated the information was inaccurate and that no one confronted Ramos when he arrived at school.
“There was not an officer readily available and armed,” Escalon said.
Escalon said he could not say why Ramos was allowed to enter the school at that time on Tuesday. According to the director, most of Ramos’ rounds were fired in the first few minutes after he entered the school.
According to Escalon’s timeline, Ramos shot his grandmother Tuesday morning and drove her truck to Robb Elementary School, driving it into a roadside ditch at 11:28 a.m. After that, he started shooting at people at a funeral home across the street, triggering a 911 call at 11:30 a.m. reporting a shooter at the school.
Ramos climbed an 8-foot-high chain-link fence onto the school grounds and started shooting before coming inside unobstructed around 11:40 a.m. At 11:44 a.m., the first officers arrived on the scene and fired gunfire at Ramos, who had taken refuge in a fourth-grade classroom, where he killed the students and teachers.
Escalon stated that an hour later, around 12:40 p.m., a Border Patrol tactical squad entered the school and was able to enter the classroom and shoot and kill Ramos.