A few days ago, I asked, Did Cops Stand By at Uvalde? At the time, information was limited, but it was already apparent from bystander video that police milled around at a safe distance from the school while the gunman murdered dozens of children at his leisure.
In the days since, more detailed information of what happened at Uvalde, Texas, has come to light. It’s horrifying and damning stuff. Police arrived at the school within minutes of the first 911 call — and then stood around outside, while children were being systematically butchered.
The first 911 call regarding the shooter came in at 11:30am. Tuesday, minutes before local police arrived and the shooter barricaded himself inside two connected fourth-grade classrooms at Robb Elementary School, [director of the Texas Department of Public Safety Steven McCraw] said. From 12:03 to 12:46pm, 911 dispatchers received numerous calls from within the classroom, including repeated calls from a child whispering that people were dead and begging: “Please send the police now,” Mr. McCraw said.
Little did those desperate children know that police were already there — and doing nothing. Well, not quite nothing: they were waiting for someone to bring them keys.
Meanwhile, at least 19 law-enforcement officers waited in the hallway, because the commander on scene, the school district’s chief of police, believed no lives were at risk and it was better to wait until a tactical team could get keys to the classroom before entering, according to Mr. McCraw.
Apparently, the sound of shots and the desperate pleas of kids phoning 911 weren’t enough of a hint. Police waited in the hallway for nearly an hour. And all that time, the killer was murdering children — children who were begging for help that they didn’t know was already there and doing nothing.
Ramos walked into the school at 11:33am[…]
Between 11:51 and 12:05, at least 19 officers and Border Patrol agents had assembled in the hallway outside the classrooms, Mr. McCraw said. At 12:15, members of the Border Patrol tactical team called Bortac arrived.
Meanwhile, 911 operators were receiving calls from within the classroom, the first at 12:03 from a girl who whispered she was in room 112, Mr. McCraw said. At 12:10, she called back and said multiple people were dead. She called again at 12:13 and 12:16, saying that eight or nine students were still alive.
At 12:19, a different girl called. “Another student told her to hang up, ” Mr. McCraw said. “At 12:21 you can hear over the 911 call that three shots were fired.” More calls came over the next half-hour and an operator advised a girl calling to stay very quiet, Mr. McCraw said. One girl asked the operator twice, four minutes apart, to please send the police now.
The noise of the Bortac agents unlocking the door, exchanging fire with Ramos, and ultimately killing him at 12:50pm could be heard on the 911 calls, Mr. McCraw said.
The Australian
“Shoot him or something!”
While their children in the classroom were fruitlessly begging police to help, parents were already gathering outside the school and pleading with police to do something, while they heard the sound of the systematic murder going on inside.
“The police were doing nothing,” said Angeli Rose Gomez, who after learning about the shooting drove 64 kilometres to Robb Elementary, where her children are in second and third grade. “They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere.”
In fact, police seemed more concerned with shutting up desperate parents than saving their children.
Ms. Gomez, a farm supervisor, said that she was one of numerous parents waiting outside the school who began encouraging—first politely, and then with more urgency—police and other law enforcement to enter the school sooner. After a few minutes, she said, US Marshals put her in handcuffs, telling her she was being arrested for intervening in an active investigation […]
Ms. Gomez described the scene as frantic. She said she saw a father tackled and thrown to the ground by police and a third pepper-sprayed. Once freed from her cuffs, Ms. Gomez made her distance from the crowd, jumped the school fence, and ran inside to grab her two children. She sprinted out of the school with them.
The Australian
“They’re all just [expletive] parked outside, dude. They need to go in there.”
It’s also been revealed that the Border Patrol agents who finally killed the shooter, did so against the orders of police.
Perhaps sensing that such horrifying facts are deeply damaging to his preferred narrative, Joe Biden has abruptly uninvited Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement officers who were present at the shooting from a scheduled meeting with the president.
Anything to control the narrative.