The police made a “wrong decision” by not entering the Uvalde school where on Tuesday a young gunman killed 19 children and two teachers and took refuge in a classroom, the director of the Department of Public Security of TexasSteven McCraw.
“From the benefit of hindsight … it was the wrong decision, period,” McCraw said at a news conference. “From what we know, we think it should have been entered as soon as possible.”
The police of this city Texas has come under fire for taking an hour to neutralize the gunman, who was barricaded in a classroom at Robb Primary School.
In an intense briefing on UvaldeMcCraw once once more tried to explain the sequence of events.
The senior official said the on-scene commander believed that, at the time, the suspect, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was barricaded alone in the classroom and that there were no survivors among the students.
“I’m not defending anything, but if you go back in time, there were hundreds of shots fired in four minutes in those two classrooms,” McCraw said.
“The subsequent shots were sporadic and were fired at the door. So they believed that no one was alive and that the subject was trying to keep law enforcement at bay.”
However, McCraw said a 911 call received at 12:16 p.m. local time – one of several made from inside the classroom – reported eight or nine children still alive. The authorities forced the door of the classroom 34 minutes later, at 12:50.
(AFP information)
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