The Pain of a Dad Outside Texas School While Shooting –

WALE, Texas (AP) – Javier Casares was on his way to his son’s school when he learned it was a shooting, leaving a truck with its doors open as he ran into the school yard. He was in no hurry to carry a weapon.

He spent the next 35-45 minutes scanning children who had fled from Robbie Elementary School because of his 9-year-old “Federicker” Jacqueline. All this time he wanted to run on his own – and he was even more upset. Along with the other parents, that policeman They could no longer stop an armed teenager from sinking into a classroom and killing children.

“Many of us argued with the police: ‘You all need to come in.’ “You all have to do your job,” said Casares, an Army veteran. “We’re ready to get to work and hurry.”

Salvador Ramos woke up early on May 24th and will be sending a terrible message. Authorities determined that the person turned 18 a week earlier and immediately bought two AR-15 rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

At dawn, in the shady area of ​​the grandparents, only half a mile from where he was to transform into the crime scene, Ramos wrote to a woman on Instagram: “I’m going there” and sent a personal message to someone. in Facebook. He was going to shoot his grandmother.

Within hours he did it.

At 11, a neighbor who was in his yard heard the sound of gunfire and saw Ramos fall through the doors of his grandparents ’house with a pickup truck parked along the narrow street. The 18-year-old looked panicked and tried to get Ford out of the park, 82-year-old Gilbert Galegos said.

Ramos finally ran, sprinkling gravel in the air. A few minutes later, her grandmother came out of a one -story house full of blood.

“This is what he did,” Galegos recalled with his cry. “It’s cool.”

Call’s wife Galegos emergency health services while he took the wounded woman in their yard. They hide and wait for the police, heard the gunshots.

At 11:28, Rob Ramos runs toward Elemental and the truck crashed into a drain, authorities say. At this point the video shows that the teachers in attendance through the door, from which the teacher came out and opened it a minute earlier.

This door is usually locked according to security protocol. But it collapsed.

According to witnesses, Ramos jumped from the passenger side of the truck with a rifle and a backpack full of ammunition. After shooting the two men while they were out on a nearby mortuary, Ramos went up the chain fence and went to school – still fire on – call the police when people panic.

Authorities initially said Ramos exchanged gunfire with a school police officer before entering the building, but later said the officer was not on campus and “hurried” when he learned of the shooting.

But the officer first approached the wrong person, who confronted someone who turned out to be a teacher: Ramos ’walker, who was sitting in the back of a car parked outside the school.

From his hiding place, Ramos went to the open door pillar, breaking into fourth-grade classrooms near 11:33 a.m., authorities said. Quickly fires over 100 rounds.

In one of the rooms, Serilio Mia, 11, covered with the blood of his friends to appear dead. He told CNN. Once the killer moved to the adjoining room, he heard the shouting, the gunshots and the sound of music from a gunman.

Two minutes after entering Ramos ’school, three policemen followed him to the same door and were quickly joined by four others. Authorities said Ramos exchanged gunfire from the courtroom with officers in the corridor and two of them received “scratch injuries.”

Broke the first police on the scene strong prime Ramos’s rifle, according to a man watching from nearby houses.

“After he started shooting at police, the police stopped shooting,” said Juan Caranza, 24. “I can tell you that firepower is stronger than police guns.”

After the hunt began, a canteen employee who had just delivered chicken tacos to 75 third-graders said the woman in the dining room shouted: “Black code. It’s not an exercise! “

Employees didn’t know what the “black code” meant, but they closed shutters, locked doors and took students behind the scenes, said a worker who spoke on condition that anonymously to avoid publicity. Their employee took refuge in the kitchen.

Nearly half an hour after the first official escort of the Ramos inside, about 19 gathered in the corridor, authorities said.

Meanwhile, trying to students and teachers from leaving the rest of the building, some of which appear in the window with the help of the police.

Casares did not know exactly when he arrived on the scene, but when he arrived he saw about five officers helping people escape. He watched it closely to see if he was with Jacqueline, who later said she loved gymnastics, singing, and dancing.

15-20 minutes after arriving at school, he first noticed the officers come with heavy headlight.

In the excitement he felt that time was “very fast and very slow”.

But he added: “Everything I saw could be very different.”

Other parents feel the same way. One observer recalled a woman shouting at the officers: “Come in! Come in! “

Minutes later, the Wawald School District posted on Facebook that all campuses were closed but “students and staff are safe in the area. The buildings are protected”.

The student called emergency services again, minutes after his first call, saying many had died, and then he called and said eight or nine students were still alive.

Thirty-four minutes passed from this last call until the moment a U.S. border patrol tactical team used the school clerk’s key to open the classroom door and kill a gunman.

Open karma allows this. The blocking karma stopped and the cops came out.

Police did not enter the courtroom faster because the building commander … School District Police Chief Pete Arendo – The situation is believed to have gone from active shooting to hostage -taking, said Stephen McCrow, Texas chief Department of Public Safety.

Officials from other agencies called on the school police chief to evacuate because the children were in danger, according to two law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to publicly investigate the investigation. . Macrow said the shooting was “sporadic” most of the time as officers waited in the hallway and investigators did not know if the children were dead at the time.

“It was a bad decision,” McCrom said.

Arredondo could not be reached for comment. No one opened his door on Friday and he did not answer a phone call left by the District Police Department.

The loss of so many youth and the confession of police wrongdoing, even to some Second Amendment supporters in the Texas community, called into question the restraint used by Republican leaders after that and other mass shootings: “ What stops guns. Bad people are armed with good people. “

Casares, a gun owner and Second-Amendment advocate, said he avoids politics, but added that he believes there should be strict gun laws, including better control of history. He described the sale of guns used by the attacker as “absurd” in a 18-year-old boy.

Casares left school before officer Ramos was killed at 12:50 p.m. He was rushed to the hospital because his niece said he saw Jacqueline in the ambulance.

Soon the whole family gathered there and trained the hospital staff to get information for almost three hours. Later they met a priest, a policeman and a doctor.

“My husband asked me if he was alive or dead,” Casares said. “They said, ‘No, he’s gone.’

When he was finally able to see his daughter’s bodies, Casares promised her death would not be in vain.

Later, she struggled with tears as she thought about her son’s last moments.

“It can be fun,” he said. “Our hearts are comforted by the fact he has been one of the brave and tried to help as much as possible.”

Bleiberg’s report from Dallas. Associated Press reporters Jim Vertuno and Robert Bamstead in Waldade, Mike Balsamo in Washington, and Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.