WWALDE, Texas – From the first minutes after a gunman started firing, officers went down to Rob Elementary School. Local police from the town of Uwalde. County Sheriff’s Deputies. Federal Border Patrol agents.
But none of the growing number of agencies had control of dozens of police officers at Tuesday’s site of what would become the deadliest school shooting since the Sandy Hook primary school massacre a decade ago.
This fell to the head of a small police department set up just four years ago to provide security in Uwalde’s eight schools. His boss, Pedro Aredondo, had ordered the assembled officers to stop storming the two adjoining classrooms, where the shooter had already fired more than 100 rounds at the walls, door and terrified fourth-graders locked inside, state police said.
As Uwalde embarked on a holiday weekend of grim gatherings and free public barbecues, questions revolved around Chief Aredondo, the role of the police and whether any of the 21 lives lost could have been saved.
At Saturday’s vigil, hundreds of mourners gathered in the parking lot behind Sacred Heart Catholic Church and urged the pastor not to live in anger. Emotions will return on Sunday with a planned visit by President Biden.
The extent to which some law enforcement officials at the scene disagreed with the decision to abstain became more apparent on Saturday as more became known about their frustration with the continued chaos of Tuesday’s shooting.
Specially trained Border Patrol agents, who arrived more than 40 minutes after the shooting began, called for permission to enter and face the shooter. “What’s your problem?” they asked, according to an official informed of the answer.
In classrooms, children whose classmates lay dead around them quietly called 911 over and over, sometimes begging dispatchers to send police to rescue them.
Roland Gutierrez, who represents the district in the U.S. Senate, said the family of one of the children killed told him that their daughter had been hit in the back by a single bullet and bled to death. “She may have been saved if they had done their job,” Mr Gutierrez said.
Eventually, police officers gathered outside were allowed to enter the classroom. A team of tactical officers from the border patrol and local police agencies broke through the door and killed 18-year-old shooter Salvador Ramos after he killed 19 children and two teachers inside.
Border patrol officers and law enforcement officials from various agencies at the scene of Tuesday’s shooting. Credit … Pete Luna / Uwalde Leader News
The decision to wait seemed to these agents at the time, and to many police experts afterwards, inconsistent with practices across departments across the country for two decades after the deadly shooting at Columbine High School in 1999.
“Columbine’s change is not necessarily accepted by agencies across the country, and that’s what you’ve seen in this situation,” said Chuck Wexler, head of the Washington-based Police Research Forum. “There are still departments in this country where there is uncertainty about this policy.
Others, including some who have provided active shooting training, have advised that rushing may not always be the best approach. “When the story was finally told, he did exactly what they were trained to do and was based on pragmatic experience in the fog of war,” said John-Michael Keys, whose group is conducting active shooting exercises for police and school districts in Texas. , speaking to Chief Aredondo.
Two Uwalde police officers were shot through the locked door to the classroom in the first minutes of the attack and fell back into the hallway with fevers.
Under Chief Aredondo, officers were told that the situation had evolved from one with an active shooter – which would require an immediate attack on the shooter, even before other children were rescued – to one with a barricaded object that would require a slower approach. officials said.
According to the director of the state police, Stephen McCrow, this seems to be an incorrect assessment: shots are sometimes heard in the rooms, including the ongoing calls of 911 children.
“It was the wrong decision, period,” said State Police Director Stephen McCrow, waiting. Credit … Ivan Pierre Aguirre for the New York Times
Part of the investigation into the shooting and police response included whether Chief Aredondo was aware of incoming 911 calls, suggesting a possible breakdown in communications during the chaotic and deadly event, according to an official informed of the Texas Rangers investigation.
Investigators are also investigating whether an attempt was made to take command of the incident from Chief Aredondo during the clash.
Gil Kerlikowski, a former Seattle police chief who later served as head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said he was surprised to hear that the school district chief, who has only six employees, was the commander of the incident. during the shooting.
Although school grounds may have been under the jurisdiction of the district, Mr Kerlikovske said, he would expect the district to immediately postpone control by the city police, which will have more experience with major incidents. He said city police could then transfer control to an agency such as the Texas Department of Public Safety once it is established on the spot.
But, Mr Kerlikowski said, he could also see a situation in which the larger agency may have to step in and put pressure on the early commander to relinquish control.
Brandon Judd, head of the Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union, said that under no circumstances would border patrol agents try to take command on their own.
“Every training that takes place, you have an incident commander, and that incident commander has the authority to make all the decisions,” Mr Judd said on Saturday. They are trained for that, he said. And when agents arrive long after the situation has begun, he said, it is even more important that they follow the chain of command.
Border patrol agents, who arrived on the chaotic scene on Tuesday, were surprised by the absence of specially equipped and trained local police officers who were able to attack classrooms, said a spokesman familiar with the federal agency’s response.
The Uwalde Police Department, which has hired about 40 sworn officers in recent years, uses some of its members as a kind of SWAT team, often to seize drugs, according to the department’s annual reports. It was not clear why a border patrol team, which was a 40-minute drive away, was instead asked to lead the attack.
The failures in the response probably outweigh the decisions made by a small police department, said Mr Gutierrez, the state senator.
“How can you blame the police chief of a school district with six cops for everything?” Mr Gutierrez said. “Everyone here failed.”
Among the 911’s first calls to an armed man on Tuesday came not from school but from a house nearby. The gunman, who lived with his grandmother a few blocks away, shot her in the face – a bullet that struck her right eye – and fled to school with his weapons, two AR-15 rifles.
Maria and Gilberto Gallegos, two retired neighbors who were outside at the time, heard two shots fired directly across the street. Suddenly, the shooter jumped out of the front door with a backpack and luggage bag and jumped into his grandmother’s pickup truck.
“He didn’t know how to drive,” said Gilbert Gallegos, the couple’s son, who told them. “He was just spinning, pushing the gas. Eventually it peels off and the tires throw pebbles everywhere.
The gunman left his grandmother’s pickup truck in a ditch. Credit … Ivan Pierre Aguirre for the New York Times
At that moment, he said, the shooter’s grandmother, Celia Martinez Gonzalez, left her house, her gait calm, but her face bloodied.
“She says to my parents in Spanish, ‘Look what happened,'” said Gilbert Gallegos. Ms. Gallegos called 911, first at 11:33 a.m. and then two minutes later. Soon after, police arrived, followed by an ambulance.
Even before they arrived, he said, his parents had heard gunfire in the area of Rob Elementary School.
Chief Aredondo did not respond to numerous requests for comment on his department’s response to the shooting. Nor did the head of the Uwalde police department, Daniel Rodriguez, or several other members of the department’s and the school district’s leadership.
In many cities across the country, including New York, city police monitor officers patrolling schools; school districts in Texas have special police departments that operate independently.
The Uwalde Consolidated School District Police Department was formed only four years ago. Earlier, the city’s police department provided school staff, said Mickey Gerdes, who was president of the board at the time. But the district and the department could not overcome conflicts in planning and discussions about costs.
Mr Gerdes said part of the decision to change was in response to an increase in school shootings and a desire to increase security in schools. (The school police officer assigned to Rob Elementary School was not on campus when the attack began on Tuesday.)
Chief Aredondo, a veteran of several departments who won the city council election two weeks before the shooting, began leading the department in early 2020, a month before the pandemic.
He had worked as a senior official in Uvalde …
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