A new report indicates that officers who delayed their response to last year’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, did so in part because they were afraid of the gunman’s rifle.
“You knew it was definitely an AR,” Sgt. Uvalda Police Headquarters. Donald Page said in an interview with detectives after the Robb Elementary School shooting. “There was no way in.”
The new police interviews and body camera evidence come from a report in the Texas Tribune, which published its investigation Monday into the poor police response.
On May 24, 2022, an 18-year-old man walked into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and killed 19 children and two teachers with an AR-15 rifle. Since the killer was eventually killed by police, questions have been raised about why it took more than a dozen officers an hour to break down the doors to the courtroom where the killer had locked himself .
Days after the shooting, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety said it was the “wrong decision” officers had been waiting for.
“In hindsight, where I sit now, obviously it wasn’t the right decision, it was the wrong decision, there was no excuse for it,” DPS Director Steven McCraw told reporters.
Dario Lopez-Mills via Associated Press
Another official, Lt. Chris Olivarez, said three days after the shooting that police delayed responding because “they could have been shot.”
The Texas Tribune report further underscores police fears as minutes tick by and the children are executed.
In a radio call sent out during the shooting, Uvalde Police Department Sgt. Daniel Coronado warned others about the gun.
“I have a male subject with RA,” Coronado said, according to the publication.
“Shit,” another officer replied.
Officials eventually decided to wait for a Border Patrol SWAT team, which had better armor and better training.
“We were not equipped to go into that room without other victims,” Detective Louis Landry of the Uvalde Police Department said in an interview obtained by the Tribune.
“Once we found out he was using a shotgun, that was another game plan we should have come up with,” Landry said. “It wasn’t just about shooting guns, Old West style, and taking them out.”
In July, Texas State University’s Rapid Enforcement Training Program released a report that detailed several law enforcement failures at the time and concluded that officers should not have retreated even if they feared for their lives.
“We commend the officers for quickly entering the building and heading toward the sound of gunfire,” the report said. “However, when the officers were fired, the momentum was lost. The officers backed off and it took more than an hour to regain momentum and access the seriously injured.”
At the time, police were waiting for ballistic shields and gas canisters, according to the ALERRT report. (The gas canisters were never used.) Less than a minute after police received the fourth ballistic shield, the shooter could be heard firing four shots into the courtroom.
Lives could have been saved if officers had responded appropriately, according to the ALERRT report.
“Although we currently do not have definitive information, it is possible that some of the people who died during this event could have been saved if they had received faster medical attention,” the report said.
Read the entire Tribune investigation here.
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