Jim Bratten
Last Tuesday, after severely wounding his grandmother, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos crashed his truck into a ditch near Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, exited the vehicle with an AR-style rifle (that he had legally obtained) and headed for the school. He entered the school through a door facing the teachers’ parking lot which was left ajar. As he was entering the school, he shot and wounded two Uvalde police officers just arriving at the scene, said Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Travis Considine.
Ramos entered the school at 11:30 a.m., entered a fourth-grade classroom, secured the door from within, and began shooting the 19 children and two teachers inside. Local police began arriving at the scene shortly after the first 9-1-1 calls were made from the school and waited for “back-up.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Texas police admitted Thursday the gunman entered the school unabated, that he was in the school for up to an hour before police engaged him, and he was actually outside the school firing shots for 12 minutes before he ever entered the school.”
As reported on TheBlaze.com, Texas DPS Lt. Chris Olivarez explained that the large amount of time elapsed before police engaged the gunman was because responding officers “could have been shot — they could have been killed.” Apparently, police stood by for “upward of 40 minutes,” said the Washington Examiner. “Witnesses cited by the Associated Press recalled shouting at police to enter the building to save the people inside. One even proposed having bystanders do the job that officers apparently refused to do as they stood outside. “Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” said Javier Cazares, who lost his fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn, in the attack. “More could have been done. They were unprepared.” A video shot just before Noon on Tuesday showed frustrated parents chastising police and trying to get into the school.
CNN reported, “An 11-year-old survivor of the Robb Elementary School massacre… feared the gunman would come back for her, so she smeared herself in her friend’s blood and played dead… She said she overheard talk of police waiting outside the school… As she recounted this… she started crying, saying she just didn’t understand why they didn’t come inside and rescue them.”
Meanwhile, parents were rushing to the school to rescue their children. One mother drove 40 miles to the school, where her children are in second and third grade. She arrived and said she was shocked at the inactivity of the police. She told the Wall Street Journal that she was “one of dozens of parents who rushed to Robb Elementary and pleaded with police officers to enter the school, neutralize the gunman, and save the innocent lives inside.” Videos show a massive police presence outside the school, blocking outraged parents from entering the building. She told the newspaper that she was detained, got free, scaled the fence surrounding the school, “rushed inside the building, and sprinted out with her children.”
Nearly an hour had passed with local law enforcement inside the building with no action against the shooter. Approximately 80 CBP agents had also responded to the shooting but were instructed by local law enforcement to wait and not go after the attacker. “After approximately 30 minutes passed, however, the federal agents opted of their own volition to lead the ‘stack’ of officers inside the school and take down the shooter,” reported NBC News. “A source told the network that the breaking point for the federal agents was when they saw that parents were trying to get into the building themselves to pull their children out” as local police inside the building did nothing.
Border Patrol agents stormed the classroom and a little after 1:00 p.m. the shooter was dead, roughly 90 minutes after he entered the school. That time span is unthinkable.
Many questions need to be answered. Why does a town of roughly 16,000 spend 40% of their budget on law enforcement? Why does a town of 16,000 have a nine member SWAT team? After training for an “active shooter” situation two weeks earlier, why didn’t the training have an effect? Why weren’t school safety protocols followed? Why did police stand by while children were massacred?
These questions need real answers. Disarming law-abiding citizens and repeal of the Second Amendment is Biden’s answer – and unacceptable.
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