Texas law enforcement officials acknowledge that local police erred in waiting to enter the elementary school in Uvalde, where 19 students and two teachers were killed Tuesday.
At a news conference Friday, Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said officers outside the school believed students were no longer in danger after the gunman barricaded himself in a classroom.
“In retrospect, where I am sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision. There are no excuses,” McCraw said.
Police have come under increasing scrutiny for how they handled the shooting. In the moments immediately following Tuesday’s attack, officials praised the actions of a US Border Patrol team and Uvalde police for neutralizing the attacker.
But graphic material has since surfaced showing witnesses yelling at officers outside the school to come in and confront the shooter.
The father of a dead student proposed that bystanders join together to enter the school because the police were staying outside. The Uvalde Police Department released a press release Thursday saying officers responded to the attack “within minutes.”
At a news conference, Victor Escalon, regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said officers arrived at the school minutes after the gunman but needed to wait for backup and more equipment after the gunman shot them. He said the Texas Division of Rangers is leading the investigation into the shooting, including how officers reacted.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting that the agency launch its own investigation into what happened.
The director of the Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed that a school door was open when the shooter entered, and that a teacher had opened it shortly before. He also said that three Uvalde police officers who arrived on the scene a couple of minutes after the assailant began shooting at the school entered the building and received “grazing wounds” from the assailant’s bullets.
Four other officers, three of whom were members of the Uvalde Police Department and a deputy county sheriff, had also followed them. He said officers began arriving about 15 minutes later, and as many as 19 officers were present in a hallway near the classroom where the suspect barricaded himself shortly after noon.
He said the commander on scene during this time believed the situation had gone from an active shooter to a barricaded subject, and that the children were no longer at risk. McCraw said members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit arrived at 12:15 p.m. He said law enforcement officers forced the classroom door open at 12:50 p.m. using a janitor’s keys because the door was locked. closed. At that point, officers shot and killed the gunman.
