Police admitted to a stunning string of failures — including driving right by the gunman — in responding to the Texas school shooting while children were being massacred inside, with the head of the state’s Department of Public Safety saying the time for making excuses about the botched response was over.
The Friday news conference came after days of confusion, inconsistencies and a muddled timeline of law enforcement’s response to the rampage at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Speaking on the delay in breaching the classroom where the shooter was, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said that "from the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision. There’s no excuse for that".
"There were children in that classroom that were still at risk," he added.
Among the more stark revelations revealed earlier Friday by McCraw
A school resource officer was not already stationed at the school. When he arrived at the scene, he inadvertently passed the shooter, who was crouched down next to a car.
The back door of the school the gunman entered had been propped open by a teacher earlier in the day.
One student in room 112 called 911 at 12:03 p.m. She called back several times. At 12:16, she said there were "eight to nine students alive," McCraw said.
At least two children called 911 pleading for help. They survived the shooting, McCraw said.
McCraw said the on-scene commander believed "this was a barricaded subject situation" and did not think there were "more children at risk".
Fifty-eight magazines were recovered. Three were on the shooter’s body, two were found in classroom 112 and six in classroom 111. Five others were found on the ground, and one was in the rifle the gunman wielded.
The shooter asked his sister to buy him a gun in September 2021 and she refused.
The gunman made several alarming posts on Instagram. In a group chat of four people in March, he made comments about buying a gun.
On March 14, he posted on Instagram "10 more days." When a user asked if he was going to shoot up a school, he said: "No. Stop asking dumb questions and you’ll see".
orginal source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/27/police-admit-to-driving-right-past-the-shooter-and-other-failures-in-responding-to-the-texas-school-massacre.html