Texas police face scrutiny over apparent delay in stopping school shooter

May 27, 2022

Shannon Longworth Reporter

By Shannon Longworth (Reporter), Ben Burke (Producer/Editor)

In the hours after Texas police gave an updated timeline of this week’s elementary school mass shooting, public scrutiny grew over an apparent delay in stopping the shooter. The Texas Department of Public Safety held a news conference Friday to clarify the timeline, as well address the anger over the police response to the shooting. According to Texas DPS Director Steven McCraw, the timeline went as follows:

11:27 a.m.: The door the shooter entered was propped open by a teacher
11:28 a.m.: Suspect crashes his car into a ditch, teacher runs to grab a phone, door remains propped open, two people at a nearby funeral home go to investigate the crash. Suspect shoots at the two people, misses.
11:30 a.m.: Teacher calls 9-1-1.
11:31 a.m.: Suspect reaches last row of vehicles in school parking lot, begins shooting at school, patrol vehicles arrive at funeral home.
11:33 a.m.: Suspect enters school, begins shooting into a classroom before barricading himself inside.
11:35 a.m.: Three officers entered the school through the same door the suspect entered. Two of the three were grazed by bullets from the suspect. The officers were followed in by four additional officers.
11:37 – 11:44 a.m.: More gunfire.
11:51 a.m.: Police sergeant, USB agents began to arrive on the scene.
12:03 p.m.: More officers arrive in the hallway of the school. There were up to 19 officers in the hallway at that time. Teacher inside classroom calls 9-1-1.
12:10 p.m.: Teacher inside classroom calls 9-1-1 again, reports multiple people were dead.
12:15 p.m.: Border Patrol tactical agents began arriving.
12:16 p.m.: Teacher inside classroom calls 9-1-1, says 8-9 students were alive.
12:19 p.m.: Person in a different classroom calls 9-1-1, is told to hang up by a student in the classroom.
12:21 p.m.: Suspect fired another shot at the classroom door. Officers moved down the hallway.
12:36 p.m.: Student inside classroom calls 9-1-1. Asks dispatch to send in police twice, before reporting she could hear officers next door.
12:50 p.m.: Officers get into the classroom using keys they got from the janitor, kill suspect.

The Friday news conference came after Texas DPS Regional Director Victor Escalon declined to explain why police had not been able to stop the school shooter sooner. On Friday, McGraw said the delay in entering the classroom was based on a decision from the incident commander that Ramos was barricaded in a classroom without children and that he was no longer an immediate threat as an active shooter. This turned out to not be the case, with McGraw revealing that there were children in the classroom.

“With the benefit of hindsight from where I’m sitting now, of course it wasn’t the right decision, it was the wrong decision period. There’s no excuse for that,” McGraw said Friday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Shannon Longworth: The Texas Department of Public Safety has now explained why it took law enforcement more than an hour to enter the school and confront the shooter in Uvalde Texas earlier this week.
Col. Steven McCraw | Texas Department of Public Safety Director: “With the benefit of hindsight from where I’m sitting now, of course it wasn’t the right decision, it was the wrong decision period. There’s no excuse for that.”
Shannon Longworth: Officials explained that officers first attempted to enter the school at 11:35, but 2 were grazed by bullets.
Deciding to wait for more tactical equipment and backup, the incident commander believed the shooter was barricaded in a classroom without children–that he was no longer an immediate threat as an active shooter.
We now know that was not the case.
There were children in that classroom.
Col. Steven McCraw | Texas Department of Public Safety Director: “Forget how I’m doing, I’m not the parents of those children. forget about me and our officers and stuff like that. We take an oath to uphold the law and protect people. And anytime something tragic like this happens we want to know why it happened and if we can do better next time.”
Shannon Longworth: Officers entered the building and killed the suspect at 12:50pm.
In today’s press conference, officials also corrected several false pieces of information disseminating in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
They say the shooter did NOT, in fact, post his plans publicly on Facebook before he executed them.
He did, however, write them in a direct message through the social media platform.