Roughly a dozen students at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, were alive for over an hour before law enforcement made it into their classrooms, according to a new report by the New York Times.
There were 33 children and 3 teachers in the path of the shooter, but police reportedly waited an hour- and-17-minutes before four officers entered the classrooms in question–despite 60 officers having arrived at the school, the report says.
Investigators have been working to determine whether any of those who died could have been saved if they had received medical attention sooner, according to an official with knowledge of the effort. But there is no question that some of the victims were still alive and in desperate need of medical attention. One teacher died in an ambulance. Three children died at nearby hospitals, according to the documents.
The documents also reveal that the officers had long guns upon arrival, which means they were well-equipped to take down the gunman. As the Times notes, there would likely have been a decreased loss of life had there been a faster direct police response. It ended up being Border Patrol, not local law enforcement, that ended up killing the shooter, the Associated Press reported.
Uvalde school district police Chief Pete Arredondo is the center of scrutiny over the law enforcement response to the shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.
In an interview with the Texas Tribune, Arredondo said that he left two radios behind, which created massive communication issues between him and other authorities. Arrendondo defended the choice by saying that grabbing the radios would have been a waste of precious time and that they might have not worked in the school, based on prior experience.
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The Tribune explains:
One of Arredondo’s most consequential decisions was immediate. Within seconds of arriving at the northeast entrance of Robb Elementary around 11:35 a.m., he left his police and campus radios outside the school.
To Arredondo, the choice was logical. An armed killer was loose on the campus of the elementary school. Every second mattered. He wanted both hands free to hold his gun, ready to aim and fire quickly and accurately if he encountered the gunman.
Arredondo provided the following account of how the incident unfolded in a phone interview, in written answers, and in explanations passed through his lawyer.
He said he didn’t speak out sooner because he didn’t want to compound the community’s grief or cast blame at others.
The chief is now also a city councilman, as he was elected prior to the shooting, but he missed his first meeting earlier this week, NBC News reported.
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