A teacher killed in the Uvalde massacre called her police officer husband for help but he was blocked from entering the school by law enforcement at the scene of the mass shooting, a report says.
Fourth-grade teacher Eva Mireles spoke on the phone with her husband, school district police officer Ruben Ruiz, before she was killed by the gunman.
“She’s in the classroom and he’s outside. It’s terrifying,” Uvalde County Judge Bill Mitchell told The New York Times after being briefed on it by sheriff’s deputies.
Mr Mitchell said that it was unclear if Officer Ruiz had told the on-scene commander, Chief Pete Arredondo, about the call with his wife.
“He was talking to his wife. Whether that was conveyed to Arredondo or anyone else, I don’t know,” Mr Mitchell told the newspaper.
And the aunt of Mireles, Lydia Martinez Delgado, added: “He could not go into the classroom where all the shooting victims were at.”
Salvador Ramos murdered Mireles and another teacher, as well as 19 students with an AR-15 rifle on 24 May.
After he got into the Robb Elementary School building through an unlocked door, officials say it took 78-minutes for a US Border Patrol tactical team to unlock the classroom door with a key and kill the gunman.
Last week Colonel Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told a news conference that the on-scene commander held off storming the classroom, even as students called 911 for help.
Chief Arredondo, the chief of police for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, believed that they were dealing with a barricaded suspect and not a live incident.
Col McCraw has called the decision to wait outside the classroom the “wrong decision” amid fierce criticism from the families of the victims.
Some parents say that they were prevented by law enforcement officers from rushing into the building to help as officers waited to act.
“The on-scene commander at that time believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject,” Col. McCraw said.
“He was convinced at the time that there was no more threat to the children.”
Now Texas state Senator Roland Gutierrez has said that during the shooting Chief Arredondo did not receive the desperate 911 calls from inside the classroom.
