Texas officials admitted Friday that cops made the “wrong decision” by not immediately storming the classroom where Uvalde gunman Salvador Ramos was holed up—even as they were getting multiple 911 calls from children desperately begging for help.
“From the benefit of hindsight, from where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision,” Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said. “It was the wrong decision, period, there’s no excuse for that.”
McCraw read aloud summaries of desperate 911 calls made from inside Robb Elementary School on Tuesday as more than a dozen officers crowded a hallway outside interconnected classrooms 111 and 112, where Ramos massacred 19 kids and two teachers.
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At 12:03 p.m.—more than 25 minutes after the first cops arrived, and more than 30 minutes after a 911 call about an armed man crashing his truck and running towards the school—someone inside the school called for help, whispering that she was in room 112.
At 12:10 p.m., that person called again to say that “multiple” people had been killed. At 12:16, she called again to say “eight to nine students” were still alive. Several more calls were made pleading for help, including a call at 12:47 p.m. in which someone urged dispatchers to “please send the police now.” It wasn’t until 12:50 p.m. that tactical units stormed the classroom, killing Ramos.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw provides an update on Friday.
Chandan Khanna/AFP via GettyMcCraw said the on-scene commander—Pete Arredondo, chief of police of the Uvalde school district—believed the situation had transitioned from an active shooter to a “barricaded subject,” giving them time to retrieve keys to the classroom and wait for further backup with tactical equipment. But in reality, it was still an active-shooter situation, with kids in the room who “clearly” remained at risk, he said.
The top cop provided a more detailed timeline Friday of the police response to the horrific massacre, revealing that the agonizing wait to storm the classroom was one hour and 15 minutes, even longer than first thought.
He said Ramos crashed his truck outside the school at 11:27 a.m. and shot at two people outside a funeral home across the road. By 11:31 a.m. he was in the school car park and firing at the school—around the same time a teacher called 911 to report the crash and a man with a gun, McCraw said.
An armed officer with the Uvalde school district was not onsite but heard the 911 call and sped to the school to “what he thought was a man with a gun at the back of the school but [it] turned out to be a teacher,” McCraw said.
“He drove right by the suspect who was hunkered down by a vehicle where he began shooting at the school,” he added.
By 11:33 a.m., Ramos had entered the school via a backdoor that a teacher had left propped open minutes earlier as she ran to fetch a phone, he said. (The Texas DPS said several days after this story was published that the teacher did, in fact, close the door but it did not lock properly.)
In the space of just a few minutes, the majority of shots were fired. “Hundreds of rounds were pumped in [to rooms 111 and 112] in four minutes,” he said.
During this time, at 11:35 a.m., three Uvalde cops arrived quickly followed by four more local officers. But they were fired upon so they called for backup and waited in a hallway. By 12:15 p.m. there were three officers from the Border Patrol’s elite BORTAC unit and another 19 local officers crowded in the hallway.
McCraw said that, after the initial burst of hundreds of rounds, the gunfire had only become sporadic shots at the door so officers mistakenly thought Ramos was barricading himself in from cops. “The belief was there may not be anyone living at that point,” he said.
It wasn’t until 12:50 p.m. that they stormed the door using keys they got from a janitor because the classrooms were locked. Meanwhile, hysterical parents were gathered outside the school and had been begging cops to go in for over an hour.
“What do I say to the parents? I don’t have anything to say to the parents, other than what happened. We are not here to defend what happened, we are here to report the facts so they have the facts,” McCraw said. “If I thought it would help, I would apologize.”
While he could not say how many children died as 19 cops stood in the hallway, he said at least two of the kids who called 911 ultimately survived.
Editor’s note: Texas DPS later clarified four days after this story was published that a teacher did not leave the backdoor propped open. The door was apparently closed but did not lock properly.
