About an hour passed between the arrival of a killer at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and the time he was shot on Tuesday. Almost an hour during which desperate parents flocked to the surroundings of the school, imploring the police to intervene, offering to enter the establishment themselves to rescue the children.
Posted yesterday at 10:30 p.m.
What there is to know
- The shooter would have had a clear way to enter the school, according to the Department of Public Safety;
- Questions remain, in particular on the response time of the police;
- Six people were still hospitalized on Thursday, four of them in serious condition.
“There were at least 40 officers armed to the teeth, but they did nothing until it was too late”, denounced to ABC Jacinto Cazares, father of little Jacklyn, 10, killed Tuesday in his school with 18 classmates and 2 teachers.
The police response time raised many questions. Parents and other residents had rushed to the school on Tuesday when they learned that gunshots had been heard there. Videos captured at the time show parents yelling at the police to act.
Daniel Myers, a 72-year-old pastor, was outside the school about 30 minutes after the shooter entered the facility. He described to Agence France-Presse how the police waited, in the absence of a specialized unit, and how the parents attending the scene were “desperate”.
PHOTO KIN MAN HUI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
As police look on, Pastor Daniel Myers places a cross in front of Robb Elementary School.
They were ready to go [dans l’établissement]. One of the relatives said, “I was in the military, just give me a gun, I’ll go. I will not hesitate. I’ll go.”
Daniel Myers
Every second counts
In this kind of situation, “every second counts”, underlined to The Press Marc Parent, CEO of Commissionaires du Québec and former director of the Montreal Police Service. “In an active killer situation, it’s clear that at the SPVM, the way to intervene is to neutralize the threat as quickly as possible,” says the man who was also team leader of the Intervention Group. Montreal tactics. We won’t wait for the elite unit to intervene. These practices have been refined over the years, following events at the Polytechnique [en 1989]. »
[L’objectif est de] neutralize and contain the threat as soon as possible to protect life because we know that what matters most is to intervene in the first seconds and minutes following the report.
Marc Parent, former director of the Montreal Police Department
The regional director for the southern part of Texas at the Department of Public Safety, Victor Escalon, also confirmed in a press conference Thursday in Uvalde that the “majority” of the shots had sounded in the first minutes of the attack. offensive. Without, however, going so far as to confirm that the 21 people killed had died shortly after the shooter’s arrival, as a police source had suggested to the New York Times earlier Thursday, in response to widespread criticism of the hour that passed without direct police intervention.
Without locked door or guard
Mr Escalon said the first officers arrived minutes after the killer arrived, but had to back off and wait for reinforcements after they were targeted.
The shooter, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, could have entered the school “unobstructed”, Escalon said. The establishment would not have been locked or protected by an armed guard, he said, contradicting information conveyed in recent days.
The shooter was shot dead by law enforcement.
An investigation is still underway to try to elucidate the events, which also left 17 injured, including 3 police officers.
Six people were still in the hospital Thursday, so a sexagenarian who would be the grandmother of the shooter. The 66-year-old woman was in “serious” condition. Salvador Ramos allegedly shot him in the face before taking his vehicle to go to the primary school.
PHOTO ALLISON DINNER, FRANCE-PRESSE AGENCY
Victor Escalon, regional director for the southern part of Texas at the Department of Public Safety
hide under a table
Two days after the attack, the city of 16,000 inhabitants, like the rest of the country, was still in shock.
“It’s time to die,” the killer allegedly said as he burst into the fourth grade classroom.
That’s what a survivor of the attack, a 9-year-old boy, told news outlet KENS in San Antonio. “I told my friend that we had to hide so he wouldn’t see us,” he added. With four other children, he would have taken refuge under a table covered with a tablecloth, escaping the fate reserved for the majority of his classmates.
The identity of the boy has not been revealed. He gave his testimony without showing his face. He said his class was watching the movie The Addams Family when he heard gunshots.
The children had learned to hide in silence if such a situation arose, a training given in many American establishments in response to the killings in schools.
US President Joe Biden and his wife Jill will travel to Uvalde on Sunday to meet the families of the victims.
With Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press, KENS and the washington post