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Tag: Texas shooting

  • Texas shooting: Uvalde gunman entered door that did not lock

    Texas police have said the gunman who shot 21 people dead at a school last week entered through a door that was supposed to lock, but somehow did not.

    The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), which is investigating the shooting response, confirmed a teacher had initially propped open the door.

    But a spokesman on Tuesday said the teacher closed the door once the gunman entered the campus.

    Public anger has risen as new details of the shooting emerge.

    Initial reports of the gunman getting into the school via an exterior door that was accidentally left open by a teacher had suggested a breach of school policy. Employees at Robb Elementary School are required to keep doors closed and locked.

    However, an attorney for the unnamed employee told the San Antonio Express-News on Tuesday that she had closed it and “thought the door would lock because that door is always supposed to be locked”.

    Don Flanary said the woman had propped the door open with a rock so she could carry food from a car into a classroom, but she “kicked the rock away when she went back in” after realising a gun-wielding assailant was on campus.

    Texas DPS spokesman Travis Considine said on Tuesday that video footage verified the door had been shut. He said investigators were now looking into why it had not locked.

    “She came back out while on her phone, she heard someone yell, ‘He has a gun!’, she saw him [the gunman] jump the fence and that he had a gun, so she ran back inside,” Mr Considine said, adding that the employee had removed the rock as she re-entered the building.

    The DPS also confirmed on Tuesday that Uvalde school district police chief Pete Arredondo had not yet responded to a Texas Rangers’ request made “a couple of days ago” for a follow-up interview.

    The school and the city police force have faced intense scrutiny since last week’s attack.

    At a heated news conference on Friday, DPS chief Steven McCraw confirmed 19 police officers had lingered in the hallway as the gunman barricaded himself inside a classroom.

    He said the commanding officer had waited until the school janitor arrived with the keys because he did not believe it was still an “active shooter” situation.

    “Of course it was not the right decision,” Mr McCraw said. “It was the wrong decision.”

    The first funerals after the shooting took place on Tuesday, as Amerie Jo Garza and Maite Rodriguez, both 10, were laid to rest.

    More funerals are planned for Wednesday, including a joint service for Irma Garcia, a 48-year-old teacher, and her husband, who died of a suspected heart attack two days after the shooting.

    Meanwhile, President Joe Biden said he plans to meet members of Congress to look for any possible way forward on gun control.

    But the prospect of any such measure passing on a polarised Capitol Hill is widely seen as a long shot.

    Source: BBC

  • Uvalde shooting: Texas school gunman ‘walked in unobstructed’

    The gunman who attacked a school in Texas on Tuesday was able to enter the building unobstructed, police say.

    Texas Ranger Victor Escalon said no armed guard challenged the teenage attacker and it is unclear if the school door was even locked.

    Mr Escalon defended the police response amid mounting criticism of an apparent delay in confronting the gunman.

    Witnesses were quoted as saying police were hesitant to confront the killer inside Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School.

    The attacker shot dead 19 students and two teachers, and injured at least 17 more people.

    The latest details from police sharply contradict what was said at a news briefing two days ago.

    Mr Escalon said on Thursday that initial reports the gunman had shot a guard were incorrect, and there was in fact no guard inside the school when the shooter arrived.

    Mr Escalon said officers entered the school four minutes after the gunman went in at about 11:40.

    But it was an hour before the gunman was killed in a shootout, at 12:45, after US Border Patrol tactical teams arrived.

    “They [didn’t] make entry immediately because of the gunfire they were receiving,” Mr Escalon told reporters.

    Videos have emerged of police being urged by desperate family members to storm the building immediately.

    A father whose daughter died in the attack told the Associated Press news agency he had considered running into the school with bystanders out of frustration at the police response.

    One mother told the Wall Street Journal that she was briefly handcuffed, accused of impeding a police investigation, after demanding along with other parents that officers storm the building. Angeli Rose Gomez said she saw one frantic father thrown to the ground by an officer, another father pepper-sprayed and a third who was later tased.

    “The police were doing nothing,” said Ms Gomez, who was eventually released before she said she jumped over the school fence and ran inside to rescue her two children. “They [the police] were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere.”

    Texas Ranger Victor Escalon gives a news conferenceGETTY IMAGES
    Texas Ranger Victor Escalon

    Mr Escalon – a Texas Ranger and spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety – said that during the time officers were outside the school they were calling in reinforcements and “also evacuating students, teachers”.

    “An hour later US Border Patrol tactical teams arrive, they make entry and shoot and kill the suspect,” he added.

    This deviates from guidance that became standard police practice after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, which states that the first officers on the scene should do whatever they can, and as fast as they can, to stop an attack, without waiting for backup.

    After crashing his truck into a ditch near the school, the gunman emerged and began firing an AR-style rifle at two people who were exiting a funeral home.

    The suspect then jumped a fence and began firing “multiple, numerous rounds” at the school building, Mr Escalon said.

    As he approached the entrance he “was not confronted by anybody”, the ranger said.

    According to Uvalde County Independent School District Officers protocol, campuses are required to have staff “who patrol door entrances, parking lots and perimeters”. Teachers are told to keep doors locked at all times.

    “We will find out as much as we can why it was unlocked,” Mr Escalon said. “Or maybe it was locked. But right now, it appears it was unlocked.”

    Texas congressman Joaquin Castro has written to the director of the FBI to ask that agents investigate the law enforcement response to the attack as it was unfolding.

    Officials say they do not yet know how many bullets the teen fired during the rampage, but one law enforcement source told CBS News the gunman was carrying over 600 rounds of ammunition.

    That’s more than double what the average US combat soldier carries, the source said, adding that it appears the gunman was preparing for a massive gun battle with police.

    Investigators have found no indication the gunman had a history of mental illness or a criminal record.

    He legally purchased two AR-style rifles in the week before the attack, after turning 18.

    President Joe Biden and the US first lady will visit Uvalde on Sunday, the White House announced.

    Across the country, students staged class walk-outs on Thursday to protest against gun violence in schools.

    A father has told the BBC how his two terrified children hid as the massacre unfolded inside Robb Elementary.

    “My son ran up to me and said he didn’t think he was going to make it out – that he didn’t think he was going to see me or his mother again,” Jesse Jimenez said. “My daughter was lost, she didn’t know what was going on, she didn’t know if it was a drill or if it was real.”

    On Thursday, the husband of one of the two teachers killed in the attack died from a heart attack.

    Joe Garcia “passed away due to grief” two days after his wife of 24 years, Irma Garcia, family members said.

    Source: BBC

  • Texas shooting: Gunman sent messages before deadly attack

    The gunman responsible for a deadly school shooting in Texas sent messages about the attack minutes before it happened, the state governor says.

    Greg Abbott said gunman Salvador Ramos promised to shoot his grandmother and then “shoot up a school”.

    Meanwhile, reports have emerged that frustrated onlookers urged police to charge into the school to stop the attack, but that they did not do so.

    Texas officials say Ramos was there for 40 minutes before he was killed.

    Eyewitness Juan Carranza, 24, told the Associated Press that women shouted to officers to “go in there”.

    Javier Cazares, whose daughter was killed in the attack, told the agency he suggested running in with other onlookers because the police “aren’t doing anything”.

    The shooting, which left 19 children and two adults dead, has reignited a long-running US debate on gun control.

    Many have called for stricter gun buying laws, while others are sceptical that they would stop mass shootings.

    Thirty minutes before he began his attack, Ramos posted in a private message on Facebook that he planned to kill his grandmother. A later post declared he had done so, and in a final one sent 15 minutes before the shooting, he announced he would target an elementary school.

    No detail was given by investigators as to the motive of the attack.

    According to CNN, the private messages were sent to a 15-year-old girl in Germany who Ramos had met online.

    In a statement, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said the “private one-to-one text messages” were “discovered after the terrible tragedy occurred”. It added that it was “closely co-operating” with investigators.

    Tuesday’s events in Uvalde – an unassuming town some 80 miles (129km) from San Antonio, America’s seventh-largest city – brought the discussion once again to the fore, even as members of the small community sought to make sense of the tragedy.

    Many there expressed divided attitudes about guns.

    “As a kid, I remember my uncles teaching me and training me on how to hold a gun,” Carlos Velasquez, a local resident, told the BBC.

    “The juxtaposition of good safety with what just happened is so nuanced. It’s not just a clean-cut thought – it’s a really sticky situation and sticky conversation to have now,” he said.

    Others, however, were shocked that Ramos, 18, was able to carry out an attack with an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle.

    “This kid was just 18. You have to be 21 to drink. How?” asked Sandra Parra, who lives down the street from the school. “I hope there are changes,” she said, referring to gun laws in Texas. “I don’t have a gun myself, but if I did, it would be for protection,” she added.

    It is legal to buy a gun at 18 in Texas, and according to US media, the attacker bought his soon after his birthday.

    Described as a loner from a “fraught home life”, the gunman shot his grandmother before fleeing the scene in a battered truck carrying firearms and copious ammunition. He then drove erratically across town and crashed his car into a ditch near Robb Elementary School.

    An officer engaged with him, but failed to stop him from entering the school. He then proceeded to shoot 19 children and two teachers dead, before officers converged on the classroom and a border patrol officer who had responded while nearby killed him, according to Mr Abbott.

    A former classmate of the gunman, Ivan Arellano, 18, told the BBC that the shooter had always seemed “odd” and “anti-social” and bullied others, presumably to attract attention.

    “A lot of people who knew him, we knew he wasn’t mentally healthy,” Mr Arellano said. “And a lot of people could agree that we probably should’ve said something.”

    However, Mr Abbott disclosed during the news conference that there had been no history to suggest the gunman could be a danger apart from the social media messages, sent less than an hour before the killings.

    Speaking on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden said the idea that a teenager was able to legally purchase weapons that were “designed and marketed to kill, is just wrong”.

    “I’m just sick and tired of what’s going on and what continues to go on,” he said, calling for “action” on gun control.

    His comments followed an incident at Mr Abbott’s news conference, where the governor’s Democratic challenger for office, Beto O’Rourke, heckled the Republican for not doing enough on gun control.

    In response, Mr Abbott accused Mr O’Rourke of grandstanding.

    According to the Texas Politics Project, only 43% of Texans support stricter gun laws. Nationally, the figure is 53% in support, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center poll.

    Chart showing attitudes to gun laws in the US

    As more details of the mass shooting emerged, the Uvalde community grieved.

    The children killed were aged between seven and 10 years old. Teachers Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia also died in the attack. More than a dozen people were also wounded.

    Vigils took place for the victims of the shooting, while people have been laying flowers near the school campus as tributes.

    “The normality is not here anymore,” Ms Parra said.

    “Uvalde will be known for its mass shooting,” said Mr Velazquez. “That’s really unfortunate.”

    Source: BBC