WARNING: This story contains details that may be disturbing to readers. Discretion is advised.
Questions are swirling around the amount of time the Texas school shooter had inside Robb Elementary until he was confronted by police in Uvalde.
Investigators are working to learn more, but authorities are facing criticism from the public in response to Tuesday’s slaughter that resulted in the deaths of 19 children and two teachers.
“They say they rushed in,” said Javier Cazares, who raced to the school as the attack which took his daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, unfolded.
“We didn’t see that.”
Here’s a look at how the day unfolded as we understand it from the standpoint of law enforcement and other public officials so far.
Salvador Ramos, 18, posted three private messages on social media: “I’m going to shoot my grandmother,” “I shot my grandmother” and “I’m going to shoot an elementary school.”
In the days leading up to the shooting, the shooter legally bought a semiautomatic rifle on his 18th birthday at a sporting goods store in Uvalde on May 17.
He then bought 375 rounds of ammunition from an unknown vendor the day after, and then purchased a second rifle at the same sporting goods store on May 19.
After shooting his grandmother, who survived the attack with a bullet wound to the face, the gunman fled in his Ford pickup truck and eventually crashed in a ditch behind Robb Elementary School.
He jumped out of the passenger side with an AR-15-style rifle and a bag. The shooter saw two witnesses at a funeral home across the street and shot at them.
People drop off flowers at a makeshift memorial outside the Robb Elementary School on May 26 in Uvalde, Texas.
Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images
He then walked toward the school, climbed a fence into the parking lot and opened fire at the institution.
The gunman entered the school through the west side, gaining entry apparently through a door that was unlocked.
He fired off more rounds after entering the building.
Authorities from multiple law enforcement agencies began to respond to the school. The gunman shot at the first officers arriving at the scene.
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They moved back and took cover before approaching the suspect again.
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Around this time, the shooter entered a fourth-grade classroom and opened fire, killing 19 children and two teachers, and injuring dozens more.
Officers reported hearing at least 25 gunshots from the classroom soon after arriving at the scene.
For roughly an hour, officers on scene called for more help, requesting tactical teams, specialty equipment, body armour, precision snipers and hostage negotiators.
They also worked to evacuate other students and teachers from the building.
U.S. Border Patrol tactical teams arrived and entered the school around 12:45 p.m. They engaged in a shootout with the gunman, who was holed up in the fourth-grade classroom.
At 12:58 p.m., law enforcement radio chatter said the shooter was killed and the siege was over.
On Thursday, authorities largely ignored questions about why officers hadn’t been able to stop the gunman sooner.
Victor Escalon, regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, told reporters he had “taken all those questions into consideration” and would offer updates later.
The news conference provided bits of previously unknown information, but by the time it ended, it had added to the many questions surrounding the attack, including about the time it took police to reach the scene and confront the gunman, and the apparent failure to lock a school door he entered through.
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A school district police officer was not inside the school when the shooter arrived, and did not confront him outside the building, officials said in an attempt to clarify their previous reports that indicated the officer did engage the shooter.
Instead, they gave out a timeline notable for unexplained delays by law enforcement.
“Based on best practices, it’s very difficult to understand why there were any types of delays, particularly when you get into reports of 40 minutes and up of going in to neutralize that shooter,” said Ken Trump, president of the consulting firm National School Safety and Security Services.
During the assault, frustrated onlookers urged officers to rush into the school, according to witnesses.
“Go in there! Go in there!” women shouted at the officers, said Juan Carranza, 24, who watched the scene from outside a house across the street.
“There were more of them. There was just one of him,” Carranza said.
The tactical team that arrived at the school did not hesitate to act, and moved rapidly to enter the building, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said on Fox News recently.
However, once they were in the building they had trouble breaching the door and had to get a staff member to open it with a key, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the investigation.
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Investigators are trying to establish whether the classroom was locked or barricaded in some way, Department of Public Safety spokesman Lt. Christopher Olivarez said on CNN.
Soon after a shooting, it’s hard to get a clear understanding of what exactly happened, said Michael Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International, which works to make schools safer.
“The information we have a couple of weeks after an event is usually quite different than what we get in the first day or two. And even that is usually quite inaccurate,” Dorn said.
For catastrophic events, “you’re usually eight to 12 months out before you really have a decent picture.”
— with files from The Associated Press and Reuters
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
