WWALDE, Texas, May 27 (Reuters) – Panicked children and teachers made half a dozen calls to emergency services from 911 classrooms in Texas, where the massacre was unfolding, begging police to intervene as approximately 20 police officers waited in the corridor for almost an hour before entering the room, authorities said Friday.
At least two children called emergency number 911 from the two connecting classrooms after 18-year-old Salvador Ramos entered with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, according to Colonel Stephen McCroy, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The field commander, the head of the school district’s Uwalde, Texas police department, believes Ramos has been barricaded in the classroom and the children are no longer at risk, giving police time to prepare, McCrow said.
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“Of course, backwards, where I’m sitting now, of course, was not the right decision,” McCrow said. “It was the wrong decision.”
Some of the trapped students in the shooter’s classrooms survived the massacre, including at least two who called 911, McCrow said, although he did not offer a specific number.
Someone McCrow did not identify called 911 several times, starting at 12:03 a.m., whispering to police that there were many dead and that “eight to nine” students were still alive, the colonel said. . A student called at 12:47 and asked the operator to “please send the police now.”
Police did not enter the classroom until 12:50 a.m., according to McCrow, when a U.S. Border Patrol tactical team used keys from a doorman to open a locked door and kill Ramos.
Several officers held an initial shooting exchange with Ramos shortly after he entered the school at 11:33 a.m. when two officers were shot. By 12:03 p.m., there were as many as 19 police officers in the hallway, McCrow said, at the same time as the first 911 call from the classroom.
Videos that appeared on Thursday showed frantic parents urging police to break into the school during the attack, some of whom must be detained by police.
Standard security protocols advise police to immediately confront an active school shooter, a point McCrow acknowledged on Friday.
“When there is an active shooter, the rules change,” he said.
Police found 142 bullets fired at the school from Ramos’ rifle, as well as nearly two dozen more on the school property outside the building, McCrow said.
In total, Ramos had 60 cartridges and 1,657 rounds of ammunition, including some left in his truck when he crashed in front of the school before the attack and two cartridges were found in his home.
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Report by Gabriela Bortter and Brad Brooks in Uwalde, Texas; additional reports by Maria Caspani in New York, Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Doina Chiaku in Washington; writing by Joseph Ax; edited by Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman
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