Law enforcement had a large enough presence at the scene of the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last month to have stopped the gunman within three minutes but the on-scene commander "chose to put the lives of officers before the lives of children," the Texas public safety chief said Tuesday.
“The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering room 111 and 112 was the on scene commander,” Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw testified before a state Senate committee.
He said that the police response to the shooting, which left 19 students and two teachers dead, was an "abject failure."
"The officers had weapons, the children had none," McCraw said.
The shooter was inside two adjoining fourth-grade classrooms for more than 70 minutes before a tactical team from the Border Patrol breached the classroom doors and killed the gunman. Police officers with rifles gathered in the hallway outside the classroom for nearly an hour while the gunman, armed with an AR-15-style rifle, carried out his attack.
While reports have indicated police were waiting for a master set of keys to enter the classrooms, an officer said a Halligan bar, an ax-like forcible-entry tool, arrived eight minutes after the shooter entered the building, according to McGraw. Authorities did not use the tool, which was not brought into the school until an hour after the first officers entered the building, and instead waited for keys, according to a Texas Tribune report.
Uvalde school district police chief Pete Arredondo previously told the Tribune that he and another group of officers tried to open the doors to classrooms 111 and 112 but that the doors were reinforced and impenetrable.
However, McGraw said the classroom door could not be locked from the inside and testified that the officers never tried to see if the door was unlocked.
The first of four ballistic shields arrived 19 minutes after the gunman arrived, he said. He also confirmed reports that Arredondo did not have a radio with him and said police and sheriff's radios did not work within the school. While Border Patrol agents' radios worked inside the school, they did not work perfectly.
Some officers on-scene were questioning why law enforcement was not entering the rooms, the Texas Tribune reported.
A special agent at the Texas Department of Public Safety arrived 20 minutes after the shooting began and asked if there were still kids in the classrooms, saying "if there is, then they just need to go in."
Another officer said it was unknown. When the agent again said, "If there's kids in there we need to go in there," someone replied, "Whoever is in charge will determine that."
While Arredondo previously said he did not believe he was the on-scene commander, the Texas Tribune reported that "at least some officers on the scene seemed to believe that Arredondo was in charge inside the school." Arredondo also seemed to be issuing orders directing officers to evacuate students from other rooms, according to the report.
When Arredondo called Uvalde police dispatch, at least 11 officers had entered the school, at least two of whom are seen in video carrying rifles. Arredondo requested a SWAT team saying "we don't have enough firepower right now."
"It's all pistol and he has an AR-15," he said. "If you can get the SWAT team set up, by the funeral home, OK, we need — yes, I need some more firepower in here because we all have pistols and this guy's got a rifle."
Community members in Uvalde, called on Arredondo to resign or be fired at a school board meeting Monday night.
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