The Texas police faced in recent hours angry criticism, accused of having taken too long to intervene in the Uvalde school where a teenager killed 19 children and two teachers, in the deadliest school shooting in the United States in a decade.
According to videos and numerous testimonies, parents waited desperately on Tuesday waiting for the police to act while an 18-year-old high school student, identified as Salvador Ramos, carried out a butchery in a classroom.
(Also read: Texas: massacre author announced on Facebook that he was going to attack a school)
As solemn acts in memory of the children and teachers killed in Tuesday’s shooting continued in the central square of Uvalde, a few kilometers away, the authorities faced increasing questions about their response to what happened.
Faced with a barrage of doubts, Victor Escalon, of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), said at a press conference that investigators were still working to piece together exactly what happened.. “Our job is to report the facts and have answers, but we don’t have them yet,” she admitted.
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Tributes to the victims of the massacre at Robb Elementary School.
The impression that the Police acted slowly or improperly has been reinforced on social networks and among some residents of Uvaldeespecially after the authorities confirmed that the attacker spent up to an hour barricaded in a classroom before being shot dead by the agents.
Several videos recorded on Tuesday circulate on the internet in which parents and relatives of students are seen in the vicinity of the school screaming and confronting the Police for, in their opinion, not intervening while the shooting was taking place inside.
Escalón indicated this Thursday that, contrary to what school district sources indicated hours before, there was no confrontation between a security guard and the attacker, Salvador Ramos, when he entered the Robb Elementary School around 11:40 a.m. Tuesday morning.
(Also: Police assure that the Texas attacker entered the school without opposition)
“It’s not true. (Ramos) He entered the school without opposition,” Escalón stressed.
The state official also acknowledged that, “apparently,” the lock on one of the school’s doors would have been open when Ramos arrived at the center, for reasons that are still being investigated.
Names of children killed at Robb Elementary School.
The facts
After shooting his grandmother in the face at her home, Ramos got into a vehicle and drove to the vicinity of the elementary school, where his car crashed around 11:28 a.m.
From there he walked with a rifle and ammunition for twelve minutes until he entered the school at around 11:40 local time. Four minutes later, the police stormed the school.
On his walk to school, Ramos shot two people who were in a funeral home across the street, without causing any injuries.
(Keep reading: This was narrated by one of the teachers who guarded the classroom during the shooting)
When local police officers arrived at the scene, they heard shots and identified the classroom where the assailant was, but they were unable to access it because Ramos opened fire on them every time they tried.
These agents called for reinforcements and began the evacuation of students and teachers from the rest of the school, while Ramos was still barricaded in a classroom where he fired indiscriminately at the attendeeskilling the 19 children and two teachers and wounding many others.
It was around 12:40 p.m. when Border Patrol special agents arrived, managing to shoot down the shooter.
Tributes in Uvalde, Texas.
One of the school teachers, present when the tragedy occurred, told the ABC channel that her students were watching a Disney movie to celebrate the upcoming end of the school year, when shots rang out.
So the children put their years of training into practice for this situation, quietly standing under his table. These trainings have become the norm in US schools, where deadly shootings are relentless.
The sounds of gunshots “were very loud,” said eight-year-old student Madison Saiz. “Our teacher told us to stand in a corner, and our whole class just did.”
The attacker’s mother, Adriana Reyes, told ABC that her son was “not a monster” but that he could “be aggressive” at times.
(You can see: The last chats of the author of the shooting in Texas before killing 19 children)
The doubts of the families
Many Uvalde residents didn’t understand why, even though the school district had recently doubled its security budget and trained officers to respond to shootings, there was no quicker response on tuesday.
In a video posted on social media and obtained by Storyful, frustrated parents can be seen urging police to enter the facility. Footage also shows an officer roughly pushing one of the people out of the store.
“We have to train our police officers so that they are capable of responding to something like this instead of waiting,” said Pastor Daniel Myers, who went to pray this Thursday in the central square of Uvalde, where 21 crosses have been installed. in honor of those killed.
Myers said that on Tuesday he approached the school and found “a hostage situation” in which no one explained to relatives what was going on until Texas Governor Greg Abbott came on television and “announced the number of victims”.
Myers also said the parents “were ready to go in. One said, ‘I was in the military, just give me a gun, I’m going in. I’m not going to hesitate. I’m going in,'” he said.
(Also read: The rifle with which the murderer shot in Texas is cheaper than an iPhone)
“How could it be that we didn’t know before? There was a grandmother at 10 at night who still didn’t know where her loved one was,” he lamented.
His complaint was similar to that of Ryan Ramirez, whose 10-year-old daughter Alithia was killed in the shooting and who at a vigil on Wednesday said he was “pretty upset” that “most parents found out” what happened to their children. around 11 p.m.” on Tuesday.
Myers insisted that the explanations of the authorities, for now, are not enough. “I hope that the Uvalde Police Department has learned something from all this, and that it undertakes changes“, stressed the pastor.
(Also: United States: The Numbers for Gun Violence)
No one explained to relatives what was going on until Texas Governor Greg Abbott went on television.
In addition to the 21 dead, 17 people were injured on Tuesday, including three police officers.
Eulalio Díaz, a local official, was in charge of identifying the bodies until late at night, according to the El Paso Times newspaper. “Some of the kids were in bad shape,” he said.
The tragedy rocked Uvalde, a predominantly Latino town of 16,000 halfway between the city of San Antonio and the Mexican border.
Meanwhile, the families continued this Thursday the preparations for the funerals of the victims, which still do not have a fixed date, and The White House announced that the president of the United States, Joe Biden, will visit Uvalde this Sunday with his wife, Jill.
And the city added a new sad news, confirming that Joe García, the husband of one of the two teachers murdered on Tuesday, Irma García, died this Thursday of a heart attack due to sadness and left four children orphans, aged 23, 19 , 15 and 13 years old.
Families of Texas school shooting victims.
In the United States, school shootings are a recurring scourge that successive governments have so far been unable to stop.
The debate on the regulation of weapons is almost on hold, given the lack of hope that Congress will approve an ambitious law of national scope on the subject.
The “March for Our Lives” movement, created after the 2018 Parkland shooting, called for a large June 11 rally in Washington to call for tougher gun regulations.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING*
*With information from EFE and AFP
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