Community members at a vigil for the 21 victims of the mass shooting
(Picture: Getty Images)Desperate onlookers urged officers who arrived on the scene of the Texas school shooting, which killed 19 children, to charge in, according to witnesses.
Among them was Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, which also claimed the lives of two teachers.
He said he arrived at the school while police were still gathered outside the building and raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders as police were not going in.
“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to," he said. “More could have been done."
“They were unprepared," he added.
“Go in there! Go in there!" nearby women shouted at the officers soon after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24, who saw the scene from outside his house across the street. Mr Carranza said the officers did not go in.
He said he witnessed the 18-year-old shooter, Salvador Ramos, crash his truck into a ditch outside the school, grab his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and shoot at two people outside a nearby funeral home who ran away uninjured.
Officials say he “encountered" a school district security officer outside the school, though it is not clear whether they exchanged gunfire.
After running inside, he fired on two arriving Uvalde police officers who were outside the building, said Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Travis Considine. The police officers were injured.
Ramos barricaded himself into one classroom and shot those inside, said Lt. Christopher Olivarez of the Department of Public Safety. All those killed were inside the classroom.
The department’s director, Steve McCraw, told reporters that 40 minutes to an hour elapsed from when Ramos opened fire on the school security officer to when the tactical team shot him.
“The bottom line is law enforcement was there," McCraw said. “They did engage immediately. They did contain (Ramos) in the classroom."
However, a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation told the AP news agency that Border Patrol agents had trouble breaching the classroom door and had to get a staff member to open the room with a key.
Mr Carranza said the officers should have entered the school sooner. “There were more of them. There was just one of him," he said.
President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that the Second Amendment, which gives the right to bear arms, is “not absolute”, as he called for new limitations on firearms in the wake of the massacre.
Texas has some of the most gun-friendly laws in the US and has been the site of some of the deadliest shootings in the country over the past five years.
But the prospects for reform of the nation’s gun regulations appear slim, with repeated attempts over the years to expand background checks and enact other curbs running into Republican opposition in Congress.
