AUSTIN, Texas — Calling the police response to the Uvalde school shooting an “abject failure,” Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw testified to the Texas Senate on Tuesday, corroborating reports indicating that numerous police were inside the school within minutes of the first 911 calls.
Law enforcement authorities had enough officers on the scene of the massacre to have stopped the gunman three minutes after he entered the building, McCraw testified in the first day of a two-day hearing focused on the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
McCraw’s testimony added withering evidence to the failed response of local police to the shooting that police experts and lawmakers have characterized as antithetical to how police should respond to an active shooter situation.
Attention continued to be focused Tuesday on Uvalde Independent School District Chief Pete Arredondo, who kept police at bay for more than 70 minutes while the 18-year-old shooter remained barricaded in a classroom with children and teachers.
Since the shooting, police have been marred by incorrect information and continued revelations about the slow action by officers that raises questions about law enforcement’s culpability in the state’s worst-ever school shooting.
The latest was confirmation Tuesday that the classroom door was unlocked, and that while Arredondo screamed for a master key to unlock the door, police could have entered at any time. Testimony showed no officer ever attempted to open the door even as the shooter opened fire three times while police waited.
McCraw’s testimony was the most detailed official account of events so far. It continued to fill in troubling details about the police response and how Arredondo, the scene’s incident commander, acted as officers armed with pistols, AR-15s and bulletproof shields remained in the hallways.
One hour, 14 minutes and 8 seconds
At 11:28 a.m. and 25 seconds, the shooter crashed a truck into a ditch adjacent to Robb Elementary School. Within one minute, a teacher who had propped a western door to the school open with a rock called 911. She removed the rock and went inside the school.
The shooter then fired four shots at two males in the direction of a Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home directly north of the school. Seconds later, a police patrol car arrived at the scene driving quickly toward a person the officer believed to be the shooter, but was actually a teacher near the south entrance of the school.
Outside the school, the shooter then fired more than 20 times into a classroom with bullets that penetrated through the walls of the classroom, injuring one teacher and a student in room 109. Here’s an updated timeline of subsequent events from DPS:
11:33 a.m.: The shooter entered the school through a door that should have automatically locked when closed, but was set to stay open. Investigation after the shooting found a second outside door had also been left unlocked in a similar manner.
Within 30 seconds, the shooter entered classrooms 111 and 112, firing about 100 shots. By three seconds after 11:36 a.m., 11 officers were on the scene, including Arredondo, the Uvalde schools’ chief.
11:37 a.m.: The shooter opened fire at officers approaching the classrooms.
11:38 a.m.: An unknown officer radioed that the shooter was “contained,” a term McCraw said was inaccurate.
11:40 a.m.: Arredondo, who did not bring his police radio into the school, called 911 from a cellphone.
“Hey, hey. It’s Arredondo. It’s Arredondo,” the chief said to the 911 dispatcher, according to a DPS transcript. “Can you hear me? No, I have to tell you where we’re at, it’s an emergency right now. I’m inside the building, I’m inside the building with this man. He has an AR-15, he shot a whole bunch of times. We’re inside the building, he’s in one room. I need a lot of firepower, so I need this building surrounded, surrounded with as many AR-15s as possible. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”
Arredondo continued to speak to a 911 dispatcher, telling them the shooter had fired multiple shots and that a SWAT team needed to be called in to surround the school.
“Yes and they need to be outside of this building prepared,” Arredondo told the dispatcher. “Because we don’t have enough firepower right now. It’s all pistol [sic] and he has an AR-15. If you can get this SWAT team set up by the funeral home, OK, and we need, yes, I need some more firepower in here because we all have pistols and this guy’s got a rifle, so I don’t have a radio, I don’t have a radio.”
Two seconds before 11:41 a.m.: The shooter fired a single gunshot. Ten seconds later a Uvalde police officer erroneously reported the shooter was barricaded in an office. “There’s still shooting,” the officer said. At that time, a Uvalde officer reported that they had a tool that firefighters often use to breach locked or blocked doors. At this time, four more law enforcement officers arrived on the scene, bringing the total to 15.
11:44 a.m.: The shooter fired a single shot.
11:48 a.m.: Uvalde schools police Officer Ruben Ruiz is overheard telling officers, “She says she is shot.” Ruiz was speaking of Eva Mireles, his wife. She was one of two teachers killed in the shooting.
Just before 11:51 a.m.: A Uvalde police officer is heard on a body camera indicating that Arredondo is the scene commander. “Chief is in there, chief is in charge right now, hold on,” the officer said. Seconds later, seven Border Patrol officers enter the west door of the school. At least 22 officers are now there.
11:52 a.m.: The first bulletproof shield arrived.
A minute later, an DPS special agent was overheard by a police body camera being asked if there are kids with the shooter. The agent responded, “If there is, then they just need to go in.”
Seconds later, the DPS special agent entered the school through the west entrance and asked an unknown officer, “Are there kids in there?” The officer responded, “It is unknown at this time.”
Over the next several minutes, the DPS special agent asked several officers about whether children were barricaded with the shooter. The agent stated that if children were with the shooter, officers should move in. The DPS agent then indicated that they would clear students from more classrooms.
“Don’t you think we should have a supervisor approve that?” a Uvalde officer asked.
“He’s not my supervisor,” the DPS agent replied.
12:03 p.m.: Using a teacher’s cellphone, 11-year-old Miah Cerrillo called 911 from inside the classroom. At a June 8 hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Cerrillo in videotaped testimony gave harrowing and heartbreaking testimony of how she covered herself in the blood of a slain friend to survive the shooting. By this time, three bulletproof shields were at the scene.
Over the next 17 minutes, elements of a Border Patrol tactical team began arriving, Arredondo requested a master key for the classrooms, he called for a sniper to get on the east roof of the school, and a fourth bulletproof shield arrived.
12:17 p.m.: Arredondo is overheard on a body worn camera stating, “Tell them to f---ing wait. No one goes in.”
12:21 p.m.: The shooter fired four shots.
For the next 29 minutes, Arredondo was overheard on body camera footage making several statements:
12:23 p.m.: “We’ve lost two kids. These walls are thin. If he starts shooting, we’re going to lose more kids. I hate to say we have to put those to the side right now.”
12:24 p.m.: Arredondo tried to speak to the shooter in English and Spanish. He got no response.
12:26 p.m.: An unknown officer told Arredondo that a teacher was shot in the classroom. He responded, “I know.”
12:27 p.m.: “People are going to ask why we’re taking so long. We’re trying to preserve the rest of life.”
12:27 p.m.: “Do we have a team ready to go? Have at it.”
12:30 p.m.: “OK. We’ve cleared out everything except for that room. We still have people down there just past the flag to the right. But, uh, we’re ready to breach, but that door is locked.”
12:33 p.m.: “I say we breach through those windows and shoot his f---ing head off through the windows.”
12:38 p.m.: Arredondo again tried to speak to the shooter.
12:41 p.m.: “Just so you understand, we think there are some injuries in there. And so you know what we did, we cleared off the rest of the building so we wouldn’t have anymore besides what’s already in there, obviously.”
12:42 pm.: “We’re having a f---ing problem getting into the room because it is locked. He’s got an AR-15, and he’s shooting everywhere like crazy. So, he’s stopped.”
12:43 p.m.: “They gotta get that f---ing door open, bro. They can’t get that door open. We need more keys or something.
12:46 p.m.: “If y’all are ready to do it, you do it, but you should distract him out that window.”
Then, three seconds after 12:50 p.m., a tactical team led by Border Patrol enters the classroom and kills the shooter. At this time, 91 law enforcement officers from various law enforcement agencies including Uvalde schools, the city of Uvalde, DPS, Border Patrol and the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office were at the scene, McCraw said.
Criticism of Arredondo
Several senators laid the blame for the botched response on Arredondo. The school chief has remained a focal point of criticism, but on Tuesday, lawmakers, the DPS chief and an expert in tactical response to active shooters said that Arredondo’s decisions cost lives.
A lawyer for Arredondo did not respond to a message seeking comment. Arredondo was in Austin at the Capitol testifying before a House investigative committee examining the shooting. However, that hearing was conducted behind closed doors.
Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, said Arredondo should be fired. Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said that after he reviewed the timeline, he questioned whether Arredondo should have ever been allowed to become an officer.
“I alternated from disappointed to flat-out angry when I read this timeline because it is an absolute total breakdown of any command and control,” Bettencourt said.
The DPS timeline constructed from 911 calls, surveillance footage and body cameras indicated that the shooter fired six shots after an initial group of 11 officers made entry into the school. Bettencourt said that each one of those shots could have been a death prevented had Arredondo ordered officers to immediately confront the shooter.
Arredondo “should have removed himself from the situation immediately,” Bettencourt continued. “Because just by looking at his response, he’s incapable of it. And the fact that we’re having this session without him, Mr. Chairman, members, I think, is a sad testament to that.”
McCraw, the DPS chief, didn’t escape questioning about his department’s response either. Sen. Brian Creighton asked why DPS didn’t take over command.
McCraw responded that it was DPS policy to defer to the local command.
“It’s our doctrine, and I think any deviation from that — a takeover by the state or a takeover by the federal at some point — I think is dangerous,” McCraw said.
Troubling signs preceding a shooting
McCraw said the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, showed warning signs on social media and privately that he might seek to carry out a mass shooting.
The shooter communicated via gaming forums and on some social media platforms his thoughts about committing a shooting. In some cases, his messages were embraced, in others he was banned. But on no platform did anyone ever make a report to the police.
“It’s almost as if he’s communicating with people that, if not supportive of the school shooter community, if there’s such a thing, but certainly empathetic and sympathetic, as if it is if they support it like it’s a good thing,” McCraw said. “You get notoriety. You get points for being a school shooter, and it’s obviously disturbing.”
McCraw said interviews with more than 500 people in the Uvalde community led them to piece together the personality of a “morose, suicidal, fatalistic loner” with a history of cruelty to animals.
“Could we have intervened if we had known? Could we have done something? And the answer is almost overwhelmingly, ‘Yes,’” McCraw said.
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