Uwalde, Texas –
The state agency investigating the mass shooting at a primary school in Uwalde found that the commander, who was criticized for his slow police response, was not wearing a radio while the massacre took place, a Texas senator said on Friday.
Senator Roland Gutierrez told the Associated Press in a brief telephone interview that a Texas Public Security officer told him that School Police Chief Pete Aredondo was without a radio during the May 24 attack by a lone gunman at Rob Elementary School. , which left 19 students and two teachers killed. Seventeen others were injured.
Authorities do not say Aredondo interacted with other law enforcement officials at the scene, including more than a dozen police officers who were waiting in front of the classroom where the gunman was hiding. Aredondo heads the district’s small division and was responsible for the response of several firing agencies.
He did not respond to numerous requests for an interview from the AP after the attack, including a phone call left to district police on Friday.
Apparently, the missing radio is the latest detail, highlighting concerns about how police coped with the shooting and why they did not face the shooter more quickly, even when tortured parents outside the school urged officers to come inside. The US Department of Justice has said it will review law enforcement responses.
Focus has approached the boss in recent days after Stephen McCrow, Texas’s head of public safety, said Aredondo believed the active shooting had become a hostage situation and that he had made the “wrong decision” not to order of officers to break the classroom faster to face the shooter.
Gutierrez, who represents Uwalde, complained on Thursday that Aredondo had not been informed of panic calls from 911 coming from students trapped in a classroom where the shooter was hiding. The Democrat called it a “system failure.”
Police radio stations are a crucial source of real-time communication during an emergency and, according to experts, often how information from 911 calls is passed on to on-site staff. It is not clear who on the site is familiar with the calls. Uwalde police did not answer questions about Thursday’s calls.
The news came amid tensions between state and local authorities over how police handled the shooting and told the public.
Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old gunman in Uwalde, spent about 80 minutes at the school, more than an hour after the first officers followed him into the building and killed him by police, according to a timeline official.
Ramos slipped through an unlocked door into adjacent fourth-grade classrooms at 11:33 a.m., authorities said. He quickly fired more than 100 rounds.
Police entered minutes later, exchanging fire with Ramos, and by 12:03 a.m. there were as many as 19 officers in the corridor outside the classroom, McCrow said. Authorities do not say where Aredondo was during this period.
Officials from other agencies called on the school police chief to let them in because the children were in danger, according to two law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation in public.
A U.S. Border Patrol tactical team is using a school employee’s key to unlock a classroom door and kill the shooter around 12:50 p.m., McCrow said.
Law enforcement and civil servants find it difficult to provide an accurate schedule and details of the shooting and how police reacted, sometimes providing conflicting information or withdrawing statements hours later. State police said some accounts are preliminary and could change when more witnesses are questioned.
Gutierrez said Friday that a Texas public safety officer told him that Uwalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busby, a Republican, had ordered the agency not to provide more information about the senator’s or the public’s investigation into the shooting.
The Department of Public Safety on Friday handed over all questions regarding the investigation into the shooting of Busbee, who did not return telephone and text messages seeking comment.
Gutierrez said Thursday that many people have to take the blame for the shooting in Uwalde, including the governor of Texas.
“There were mistakes at every level, including the legislative level. Greg Abbott is very much to blame for all this, “he said.
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Coronado reports from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writers Jake Bleiberg in Dallas; Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas; and Mike Balsamo of Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
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