Two days after the killings in Uvalde, Texas, the exact course of the tragedy and the role of law enforcement were at the center of questions on Thursday, May 26, with some parents accusing the police of being passive. “There were at least 40 officers armed to the teeth, but they didn’t do anything until it was too late,” Jacinto Cazares, father of 10-year-old Jacklyn Cazares, killed in the incident, told ABC. of the massacre at Robb Elementary School in the Texas town.
He described to the Washington Post the anxious parents waiting outside the school: “We were five or six fathers, we heard the gunshots, and the [police] told us to back off. We weren’t afraid for ourselves. We wanted to storm the building. We were saying “Let’s go” so worried we were and wanted to get our little ones out. »
Parents turned away by the police
In a video posted on social media, parents can be seen urging police to enter the facility. The footage also shows a police officer roughly pushing away parents while two others hold down a person.
One of the school teachers, present in the establishment at the time of the tragedy, said that her students were watching a Disney film to celebrate the upcoming end of the school year, when shots rang out. His students then put into practice their years of training for such a situation, gathering in silence under their table. These trainings have become the norm in schools in the United States, where deadly shootings are repeated tirelessly from year to year. “They knew it was not a drill. We had to be quiet, or else we were going to alert him to our presence, ”detailed the teacher who wished to remain anonymous. What followed, she said, was “the longest thirty-five minutes of my life.”
Daniel Myers, a 72-year-old pastor, arrived with his wife Matilda outside the school about thirty minutes after the shooter entered the school. He described to Agence France-Presse how the police had waited in the absence of a specialized unit to carry out the assault, and how the parents attending the scene were “desperate”.
Law enforcement said on Wednesday they tried to stop Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old gunman, from entering the school. But, after an exchange of gunfire, during which two police officers were injured, he managed to barricade himself in a classroom. It was there that he killed nineteen children, but also two teachers.
Difficulties entering the classroom
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw told CNN that Salvador Ramos remained inside the school for about forty minutes before police managed to shoot him. “The bottom line is that the police were there,” Steven McCraw told the Associated Press (AP). “They engaged immediately. They cornered [Ramos] in the classroom. »
The head of the border police, Raul Ortiz, whose agents were on the spot, for his part, assured that the latter “did not hesitate”. They moved quickly into position to enter the building, in a column of assault, behind an officer holding a shield. “They’ve come up with a plan. They walked into the classroom and they came up with a solution as quickly as they could,” he told CNN.
But a law enforcement official told AP that once inside the building they were unable to enter the classroom where Salvador Ramos was holed up and had to ask a staff member with a a key to open the door.
In the absence of a medical examiner, Eulalio Diaz, a local official, was tasked with identifying the bodies late into the night, he told the El Paso Times daily. “Some of the children were in a bad state,” said the chosen one. Parents awaiting news of their children provided DNA samples to speed up the identification process. Eulalio Diaz expects the bodies to be buried within the next 48 hours while autopsies are completed.
