Aware of Injuries Inside, Uvalde Police Waited to Confront Gunman
Heavily armed officers delayed confronting a gunman in Uvalde, Texas, for more than an hour despite supervisors at the scene being told that some trapped with him in two elementary school classrooms were in need of medical treatment, a new review of video footage and other investigative material shows. Instead, the documents show, they waited for protective equipment to lower the risk to law enforcement officers.
The school district police chief, who was leading the response to the May 24 shooting, appeared to be agonizing over the length of time it was taking to secure the shields that would help protect officers when they entered and to find a key for the classroom doors...
The chief, Pete Arredondo, and others at the scene became aware that not everyone inside the classrooms was already dead, the documents showed, including a report from a school district police officer whose wife, a teacher, had spoken to him by phone from one of the classrooms to say she had been shot.
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Investigators have been working to determine whether any of those who died could have been saved if they had received medical attention sooner,
They're investigating that to determine how many criminal charges to file against Arredondo.
according to an official with knowledge of the effort. But there is no question that some of the victims were still alive and in desperate need of medical attention.
You can hear the exasperation of the reporter, J. David Goodman, in the words he types.
One teacher died in an ambulance. Three children died at nearby hospitals, according to the documents.
Xavier Lopez, 10, was one of the children who died after being rushed to a hospital. His family said he had been shot in the back and lost a lot of blood as he awaited medical attention. “He could had been saved,” his grandfather Leonard Sandoval said. “The police did not go in for more than an hour. He bled out.”
“We think there are some injuries in there,” the man believed to be Chief Arredondo said several minutes before the breach, according to the transcript. “And so you know what we did, we cleared off the rest of the building so we wouldn’t have any more, besides what’s already in there, obviously.”
Unbelievable. You didn't "think," you knew; and rather than breach where you know there are injured, you clear other areas where you don't know if there are injured.
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Among the revelations in the documents:...some of the officers who first arrived at the school had long guns, more
firepower than previously known; and Chief Arredondo learned the
gunman’s identity while inside the school and attempted in vain to
communicate with him by name through the closed classroom doors. ...after an initial burst of shooting from the gunman, no police officer went near the door again for more than 40 minutes, instead hanging back at a distance in the hallway.
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...Arredondo, who had earlier focused on
evacuating other classrooms, began to discuss breaching the classrooms
where the gunman was holed up about an hour after the gunfire started
inside the school at 11:33 a.m. He did so after several shots could be
heard inside the classrooms, after a long lull, around 12:21 p.m., video
footage showed.
But he wanted to find the keys first.
“We’re ready to breach, but that door is locked,” he said, according to the transcript, around 12:30 p.m.
By that point, officers in and around the school had been growing increasingly impatient, and in some cases had been loudly voicing their concerns. “If there’s kids in there, we need to go in there,” one officer could be heard saying, according to the documents. ...
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[The murderer] had amassed an arsenal of weapons that included two AR-15-style rifles, accessories and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, according to the documents. He spent more than $6,000. ...[He] made the purchases legally, [Why don't we make that illegal?] using money he appeared to have earned working at a Wendy’s and occasionally doing air-conditioning work for his grandfather...
How much does Wendy's pay?
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Arredondo was among the first officers to enter the school and approach the classrooms where the gunman was.
Two Uvalde Police Department officers, a lieutenant and a sergeant, were shot and suffered grazing wounds after they tried to peer through a window in one of the classroom doors, the surveillance footage showed. The entire group of officers who had arrived by then sought cover down the hallway.
That's what it was, Arredondo saw two of his guys get grazed and got scared. He's a pussy, a fucking COW-ARD.
No one would approach the classroom doors again, the video showed, for more than 40 minutes, though well-armed officers began quickly arriving.
...Eva Mireles [and nine] children were wounded but survived...
Ms. Mireles’s husband, Ruben Ruiz, who worked for Chief Arredondo as one of six uniformed members of the Uvalde school district’s Police Department, had rushed to the school, and it is now clear from the documents that he informed the responders on scene that his wife was still alive in one of the classrooms.
“She says she is shot,” Officer Ruiz could be heard telling other officers as he arrived inside the school at 11:48 a.m., according to the body camera transcript.
That message appeared to have reached a sergeant from the Uvalde Police Department, who was near Chief Arredondo inside of the school.
“There’s a teacher shot in there,” an officer could be heard telling the sergeant, according to the transcript, just before 12:30 p.m.
“I know,” the sergeant replied.
...Officers could be seen in video footage rushing a few children out of the room and carrying out Ms. Mireles, who appeared to be in extreme pain. She reached an ambulance, but died before reaching a hospital.
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By that time, heavily armed tactical officers had arrived, along with protective shields. Chief Arredondo at that point signaled his support for going into the room, but began asking repeatedly for keys that would work on the door.
...[The murderer] was in a corner near a closet in Room 111, facing the doorway, body camera footage showed. He exchanged fire with the officers as they entered. A bullet grazed a Border Patrol agent who was near the door. One of the bullets appeared to have struck the gunman in the head, killing him.
Across the room, the bodies of children lay in an unmoving mass, according to the documents. A similar cluster of bodies lay in Room 112.
