A grieving man who lost his great-granddaughter in the Uvalde mass shooting at Robb Elementary School challenged the city's police over their response to the attack.
The incident took place near a makeshift memorial for the 19 students and two faculty members killed by an 18-year-old gunman last week.
Ruben Mata, the great-grandfather of 10-year-old Alexandria Rubio — who was killed in the attack — was present at the memorial and became emotional.
Jon Farina of Status Coup News captured a video of the incident, which depicts Mr Mata in the park just as Uvalde police arrive. Based on Mr Mata's words, it appears that police were called in response to his actions.
When the officers approach him, Mr Mata notes that "it didn't take you but a few minutes" to get to the park, a reference to the fact that the gunman at the school was allowed to remain inside for 90 minutes before a Border Patrol unit — not the police — killed the shooter.
According to Mediaite, the police Mr Mata was yelling at were not actually Uvalde police, but assisting officers from Conroe, Texas.
As the officers approach him, Mr Mata tells them he’s “gonna show you something,” before reaching into his pocket, setting everyone in the scene on edge.
“I got a knife,” he yells out, before pulling a small knife from his pocket. “Pull your gun out! I’m not going to kill nobody! But I got a knife! Let’s see how brave y’all are with your guns.”
He eventually hands the knife to the police without incident.
After the tense standoff, Mr Mata leads police to a makeshift memorial of flowers surrounding a fountain in a city park, and tells them that “that’s my great-granddaughter.”
“Where were you people?” he asks.
Mr Mata’s great-granddaughter was the daughter of a local sheriff’s deputy, Felix Rubio, and his wife, Kimberly-Mata Rubio.
When Mr Mata first arrived at the memorial he was yelling at the scene from the side of the road. A group of men went over to meet him and console him. He told them that the children were dead because “the g***** cops...did not do their job.”
The Uvalde police have been the subject of intense criticism since it was revealed that they waited for backup outside the school while the shooter killed people inside the building. That criticism grew more intense when news broke that not only did the police not directly engage the shooter, but they actively prevented parents from rushing in to the building to find their children.
A Border Patrol unit with ballistic shields eventually made a unilateral decision to enter the school and kill the shooter.
