New Uvalde Report Reveals Unforgivable New Details
When Americans began to hear about the horrors that occurred at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, they were heartbroken. A young gunman had entered the school, opened fire, and taken the lives of 19 children and 2 adults.
But when the nation started to catch wind of the unconscionably poor response by local police, they were enraged.
Videos from that fateful day showed officers refusing to enter the school, even as gunshots rang out from the classrooms within. Worse still: Some local bystanders and parents were ready and willing to take matters into their own hands, but were detained by the same unresponsive police.
This week, a new report into the incident revealed a horrible truth.
A Texas police officer had the Uvalde gunman in his sights but never fired a shot, believing — perhaps incorrectly — that he needed permission to fire, a new study of the mass killing revealed Wednesday.
The report from Texas State University, reviewing the law enforcement response to the deadly attack at Robb Elementary School, raised the troubling question of whether Salvador Rolando Ramos could have been stopped before he even entered the campus where he would kill 19 children and two teachers on May 24.
Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training, which regularly evaluates active shooter responses, pointed to several significant errors that were made before Ramos walked through an open school door.
The tale is nearly unforgivable.
The most disturbing could be that a Uvalde police officer reported he was at the scene where Ramos, 18, had crashed his truck before he got out carrying a rifle.
The killer walked into the teachers’ parking lot at 11:32 a.m. “and fired through windows into the westmost rooms prior to entering the building,” according to the report, titled “Robb Elementary School Attack Response Assessment and Recommendations.”
Before Ramos entered the school at 11:33 a.m., “a Uvalde Police Officer on scene at the crash site observed the suspect carrying a rifle outside the west hall entry.”
“The officer, armed with a rifle, asked his supervisor for permission to shoot the suspect,” the report continued. “However, the supervisor either did not hear or responded too late. The officer turned to get confirmation from his supervisor and when he turned back to address the suspect, he had entered the west hallway unabated.”
It has long been believed that law enforcement’s unbelievably poor response cost lives on that day, and there is little doubt that evidence supporting this claim will continue to emerge in the coming weeks.