Investigators in Texas were seeking to determine on Saturday how critical mistakes were made in the response to the Uvalde shooting, including why nearly 20 police officers remained outside a grade school classroom as children placed panicked 911 calls for help.
Why the officers waited in the hallway for nearly an hour before entering and fatally shooting the gunman is at the heart of an ongoing investigation by the Texas Department of Public Safety into the massacre of 19 children and two teachers in the deadliest US school shooting in nearly a decade.
Investigators are also still searching for a motive for the attack. Salvador Ramos, a high school dropout, had no criminal record and no history of mental illness.
Pupils trapped inside the elementary school class repeatedly called 911 during the attack, including one girl who pleaded: “Please send the police now”, as officers waited more than an hour to breach the room.
The commander at the scene in Uvalde believed that the 18-year-old gunman was barricaded inside adjoining classrooms at Robb Elementary School and that children were no longer at risk, according to Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas department of public safety.
“It was the wrong decision,” Mr McCraw said.
The briefing came after authorities spent three days providing often conflicting and incomplete information about more than 60 minutes that elapsed between the time Ramos entered the school and when US Border Patrol agents unlocked the classroom door and killed him.
Three police officers followed Ramos into the building within two minutes.
In the next half an hour, as many as 19 officers piled into the hallway outside.
But another 47 minutes passed before the Border Patrol tactical team breached the door, Mr McCraw said.
As the gunman fired at students, law enforcement officers from other agencies urged the school police chief to let them move in because children were in danger, two law enforcement officials said.
One of the officials said audio recordings from the scene capture officers from other agencies telling the school police chief that the shooter was still active and that the priority was to stop him.
Ramos killed 19 children and two teachers inside the room. His motive remains unclear, authorities said.
There was a barrage of gunfire shortly after Ramos entered the classroom where officers eventually killed him, but those shots were “sporadic” for much of the time that officers waited in the hallway, Mr McCraw said.
He said investigators do not know if children died during that time.
Throughout the attack, teachers and children repeatedly called 911 asking for help, including the girl who pleaded for the police, Mr McCraw said.
Young survivors of the attack said they pretended to be dead while waiting for help.
Miah Cerrillo (11) told CNN that she covered herself with a friend’s blood in order to look dead.
After the shooter moved into an adjacent room, she could hear screams, more gunfire and music being blared by the gunman.
Samuel Salinas (10) who also played dead, told ABC’s Good Morning America that the assailant shot teacher Irma Garcia before firing on the children.
Questions have mounted over the amount of time it took officers to enter the school to confront the gunman.
It was 11.28am local time on Tuesday when Ramos’ Ford pickup slammed into a ditch behind the low-slung Texas school and the driver jumped out carrying an AR-15-style rifle.
Five minutes after that, authorities said, Ramos entered the school and found his way to the fourth grade classroom where he killed the 21 victims.
But it was not until around 12.50pm local time that police killed Ramos, Mr McCraw said, when shots could be heard over a 911 call from a person inside the classroom as officers breached the room.
What happened during that time frame, in a working-class area near the edge of Uvalde, has fuelled mounting public anger and scrutiny over law enforcement’s response to the rampage.
“They say they rushed in,” said Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack, and who raced to the school as the massacre unfolded.
“We didn’t see that.”
According to the new timeline provided by Mr McCraw, after crashing his truck, Ramos fired on two people coming out of a nearby funeral home, officials said.
Contrary to earlier statements by officials, a school district police officer was not at the school when Ramos arrived. When that officer did respond, he unknowingly drove past Ramos, who was crouched behind a car parked outside and firing at the building, Mr McCraw said.
At 11.33am, Ramos entered the school through a rear door that had
been propped open and fired more than 100 rounds into a pair of classrooms, Mr McCraw said. He did not address why the door was propped open.
Two minutes later, three local police officers arrived and entered the building through the same door, followed soon after by four others, Mr McCraw said.
Within 15 minutes, officers from different agencies had assembled in the hallway, taking sporadic fire from Ramos, who was holed up in a classroom.
Ramos was still inside at 12.10pm when the first US Marshals Service deputies arrived.
They had raced to the school from nearly 70 miles away in the border town of Del Rio, the agency said in a tweet Friday.
But the commander inside the building – the school district’s police chief, Pete Arredondo – decided the group should wait to confront the gunman, on the belief that the scene was no longer an active attack, Mr McCraw said.
The crisis came to an end at 12.50pm, after officers used keys from a janitor to open the classroom door, entered the room and fatally shot Ramos, he said.
Mr Arredondo could not be reached for comment on Friday.
Texas governor Greg Abbott, who lauded the police response in a news conference on Wednesday, said on Friday that he was “misled”, and that he is “livid”.
In his earlier statements, the governor told reporters, he was repeating what he had been told. “The information that I was given turned out, in part, to be inaccurate,” he said.
Mr Abbott said exactly what happened needs to be “thoroughly, exhaustively” investigated.
The governor previously praised law enforcement for their “amazing courage by running toward gunfire” and their “quick response”.
The motive for the massacre — the nation’s deadliest school shooting since Newtown, Connecticut, almost a decade ago — remains under investigation. Authorities have said Ramos had no known criminal or mental health history.
During the siege, frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into the school, according to witnesses.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat who has urged Congress to approve new gun restrictions, will visit Uvalde on Sunday to comfort families and pay respects to the young victims. — AP/Reuters