Instead, police armed with guns circled around for about an hour before storming the classroom and shooting the gunman, Who just killed 19 children and two teachers.
However, it turned out that the door to this classroom could not be locked from the inside, and there is no indication that the police tried to open it, while the shooter was inside, testified by Colonel Steve McCraw, Texas State Department Administrator. Public Safety. Instead, he said, the police waited for the key.
Why didn’t you check the handle to see if the door was really closed?
asked the official at the state level.
Colonel Macro was testifying Tuesday at a Texas Senate hearing about the police response to the May 24 tragedy at Ovaldi School. Delays in the law enforcement response have been investigated by the federal government, the Texas government, and local government.
Obviously very little training was given in this case, and it’s plain and simple. Terrible decisions were made by the leader on site
said Macro of Pete Arredondo, Ovaldi School District Police Chief.
McCraw said that eight minutes after the shooter stormed the school, an officer indicated that the police had a claw that could be used to break down the classroom door. The witness said that nineteen minutes after the shooter entered the building, the police first entered the ballistic shield.
Mr. Macro told the Senate committee that Pete Arredondo had decided to put the lives of police officers over the lives of children.
A series of missed opportunities
The state’s director of public safety listed on the Senate committee on Tuesday a series of missed opportunities, miscommunication, and other errors that day:
- Chief Arredondo did not have a radio.
- The police and mayor’s radios were not working inside the school; Only the agents of the border guards on the site worked inside, not ideally.
- Some of the school charts the police used to coordinate their intervention were wrong.
Questions about police intervention began a few days after the murder. Mr. McCro said three days after the shooting that Chief Arredondo made the ‘wrong decision’ When he chose not to break into class for more than 70 minutes.
Meanwhile, fourth graders trapped in two classrooms called 911 for help, and parents afflicted outside the school begged the police to enter the facility.
Mr. Arredondo later clarified that he did not consider himself the person responsible that day – he assumed that someone else had taken charge of the intervention. He declined repeated requests from the Associated Press for comment on the case.
As for the time that elapsed before the police entered the classroom, Mr. McCra thinks so In an active shooting environment, this is unbearable […] It set our profession back a decade
.
In the days and weeks following the shootings, authorities gave conflicting and incorrect accounts of what happened, sometimes retracting statements hours after they were made. Meanwhile, Mr. McCro reassured lawmakers on Tuesday that everything he testified was installed
.
The 18-year-old shooter used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.
