By now, it seems trite to say that every time we learn anything new about the shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, the situation regarding police action there looks worse. But … it’s worse. It’s so much worse.
As the Texas Tribune reported on Monday, almost an hour before members of the Border Patrol finally opened the door to the classroom where the shooter had enclosed himself with fourth-graders and two teachers—a door that we now know was never locked in the first place—officers were on the scene with AR-15 rifles of their own and not only body armor, but at least one “ballistic shield” designed precisely for the situation they were facing.
Police from multiple departments and agencies were there in numbers. They had every possible piece of kit to protect them from harm if they tried to enter the classroom. There were no obstacles in their way. And still, “during most of those 77 minutes, despite the urgent pleas from officers and parents amassed outside, officers stayed put outside rooms 111 and 112, stationed on either end of a wide hallway with sky blue and green walls and bulletin boards displaying children’s artwork.”
Inside the room, the shooter fired off at least four bursts of shots, executing children while they waited.
Wednesday, Jun 22, 2022 · 5:43:32 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Correction:
And deep apologies to officer Ruben Ruiz, whose wife Eva Mireles was one of the two teachers who died at Robb Elementary.
In this article, and in others, I’ve indicated that Ruiz failed to act even though he knew his wife was wounded and bleeding on the other side of a wooden door. However, it turns out that the real story of what happened with Ruiz is yet another fact that’s been hidden from the public.
In testimony on Tuesday, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw, said that Ruiz did attempt to go in to save his wife — and the children in the room with her. However, according to McCraw.
“What happened to him, is he tried to move forward into the hallway. He was detained and they took his gun away from him and escorted him off the scene.”
The person who detained Ruiz, or what happened to him after that point has not been made public.
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Included in the latest round of ever-more-disgusting revelations is that when an agent from the Texas Department of Public Safety arrived 20 minutes into the shooting, the officers waiting outside the door claimed they didn’t know if there were children inside.
“If there is, then they just need to go in,” the agent said.
Another officer answered, “It is unknown at this time.”
The agent shot back, “Y’all don’t know if there’s kids in there?” He added, “If there’s kids in there we need to go in there.”
“Whoever is in charge will determine that,” came the reply.
The inaction appeared too much for the special agent. He noted that there were still children in other classrooms within the school who needed to be evacuated.
“Well, there’s kids over here,” he said. “So I’m getting kids out.”
That agent left the hallway in disgust and helped evacuate children from other classrooms. The officers in the hallway … stood there outside the door.
The door they didn’t test. The door beyond which were two fourth-grade classrooms. The classrooms from which they were getting phone calls begging for help, including the wife of one of those officers who called her police officer husband as she was bleeding to death in that room.
When those police officers claimed they didn’t know if there were kids in the room, this is who they were failing to protect.
It wasn’t just one phone call, it wasn’t two. Both teacher Eva Mireless, who had already been wounded, and multiple other children called 911 begging for those men outside the door to come in.
Pete Arredondo, police chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, has claimed he “did not receive those calls.” That Arredondo wasn’t actually on the other end of the phone for those children and teachers is perfectly believable. That the men in that hallway didn’t know there were children inside, and that they were being killed, is absolutely not believable.
The cowardice and incompetence on display get more staggering with every revelation. At this point, it’s safe to say that anyone—anyone—with the available equipment and information would have opened that door and tried to save those kids. Anyone except the men who stood around and listened to them die.