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The students of Uvalde (Texas) returned to school this Tuesday, September 6, amid fear and increased security, three months after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in a shooting that shocked the United States. and to the world. Robb Elementary School, where the shooting took place, will not reopen.
Walking through six-foot chain-link fences and past soldiers standing guard, children from the Uvalde School District in Texas returned to school Tuesday morning in an atmosphere of mourning and fear.
Although security measures have been reinforced for the resumption of classes, the authorities announced that more cameras and new locks still need to be installed. The Texas Department of Public Safety has also committed to deploying more than three dozen state troopers to Uvalde campuses.
But these announcements were not enough to reassure families. More than 90 state troopers were present at the scene when the shooting took place. Many families decided to send their children to virtual classes, while those who could afford it chose to withdraw them from the district and enroll them in public schools.
“It will never make sense”
For the first time in 30 years, Elsa Ávila, a teacher who was shot in the abdomen, will not be able to start the school year. The teacher continues to recover. On May 24, she and her 16 students had to wait more than an hour for the police to arrive to evacuate them, while the gunman massacred children in adjoining classrooms.
“I’m trying to make sense of this,” Avila told the Associated Press in an interview in August, “but it will never make sense.”
Around the town of Uvalde, large and colorful murals were painted in honor of each of the 21 victims. Residents across the state were encouraged to wear the colors brown and white, and schools in other areas also wore the same colors, which are those of the Uvalde school.
In the halls of the Uvalde School District, colored flags were hung and all the teachers wore turquoise T-shirts with the words “Together We Rise & Together We Are Better” on the back.
Although students in many parts of Texas had already returned to school, authorities have postponed the first day of the new school year in Uvalde. For the South Texas city of 22,000, the summer has been one of anguish, pain and anger for the victims’ families, following revelations about law enforcement failures that allowed the 18-year-old shooter, armed with a AR-15 rifle, shooting at the children and their teachers in the classrooms for more than an hour.
The police response: an “absolute failure”
A damning report by a Texas House committee revealed that nearly 400 officers responded to Robb Elementary School after the shooting, but waited more than an hour to confront the gunman.
Body cameras that police officers are required to wear and surveillance footage showed heavily armed officers, some with bulletproof shields, stacked in a corner of the hallway without moving toward the classroom.
Steve McCraw, head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, called the response an “absolute failure.”
Last month, the Uvalde school board fired the district’s police chief, Pete Arredondo, whom McCraw and the House report accused of not taking control of what was happening and wasting time looking for the key to a classroom door that was probably already unlocked. That dismissal did not silence calls for sanctions against other officials. Another officer, Mariano Pargas, acting chief of police that day, was placed on administrative leave.
According to the Reuters news agency, the school board said at a meeting last week that an investigation into the police response to the shooting has not yet been launched.
AP
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