UVALDE, TX – A shocking new report – backed with CCTV video footage – appears to dispute previous assertions made by the Uvalde Police Department that they had failed to immediately engage an 18 year-old gunman who was slaughtering students at Robb Elementary School because they were waiting for SWAT teams armed with tactical gear.
Instead, video obtained from school’s interior surveillance cameras revealed that 11 officers had entered the school just three minutes after the shooting began, and within 19 minutes multiple Uvalde Police officers had arrived armed with long rifles and ballistic shields.
However, instead of engaging the suspect as he continued to mow down innocent children, the heavily-armed officers just stood for nearly a full hour in a hallway before doing anything at all, at which point 19 children and two adults were dead.
This news has subjected local Uvalde parents – many of whom were prevented by police from entering the school themselves to save their children – to further heartbreak, knowing that perhaps far fewer children would have died if police hadn’t failed to act.
Representing the 27th school shooting in 2022 so far, Salvador Ramos, 18, armed himself with an AR-15 rifle that he had purchased after his birthday just days before the attack, and entered Robb Elementary School at approximately 11:30 a.m. on May 24. Once inside, Ramos proceeded to barricade himself inside a fourth-grade classroom and opened fire on everyone trapped inside.
Ramos would later be shot dead by responding U.S. Border Patrol officers.
The Uvalde Police Department – already heavily criticized and under both local and federal investigation for their heavily botched response to the horrific incident – has become even more vilified in the public’s view with this new report, which not only revealed responding officers were more than adequately armed to address the threat, but the amount of time that waited to act was longer than the department first claimed.
School district police Chief Pete Arredondo is being scrutinized the most for his decision not to have officers storm the classroom where Ramos had barricaded himself, and for falsely claiming that officers on the scene were “outgunned” because they were armed only with pistols.
Currently, a legislative committee is holding a series of closed-door hearings in Uvalde to examine the response of law enforcement in the tragedy.
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