Did the police intervene quickly enough on Tuesday at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas? Several questions remained unanswered on Thursday – some witnesses outside the school going so far as to denounce the passivity of the police.
Posted at 10:41 a.m.
Updated at 10:59 a.m.
“There were at least 40 officers armed to the teeth, but they didn’t do anything until it was too late,” Jacinto Cazares, father of 10-year-old Jacklyn Cazares, who was killed in the incident, told ABC. the massacre at Robb Elementary School in the Texas town.
On Thursday, videos on social media and testimonials to various media showed the feeling of helplessness and anger outside Robb School on Tuesday, while the killer was barricaded in a classroom there.
” Go for it ! Go ahead,” a woman said to law enforcement gathered near the school, according to the Associated Press.
It would have taken place between 40 minutes and 1 hour before the intervention of the police in the Robb school, where the shooter, identified as an 18-year-old man named Salvador Ramos, had confined himself to a fourth-grade class.
Shortly after arriving at the elementary school, the young gunman reportedly exchanged gunfire outside the school with two police officers, who were injured, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
An investigation is underway to try to shed light on the course of the events, in which 19 children and 2 teachers were killed.
“Desperate”
Daniel Myers, a 72-year-old pastor, had arrived with his wife Matilda outside the school about 30 minutes after the shooter entered the school.
He described to AFP how the police waited in the absence of a specialized unit to storm, and how the parents attending the scene were “desperate”.
“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”. »
The police said on Wednesday that they had tried to prevent Salvador Ramos from entering the school.
But, after an exchange of gunfire, he managed to barricade himself in a fourth grade classroom.
Burials
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw told CNN that Salvador Ramos remained inside the school for about 40 minutes before police managed to shoot him.
Border police chief Raul Ortiz, whose officers were on site, assured him that the latter “did not hesitate”.
“They came up with a plan. They walked into the classroom and they solved this as quickly as they could,” he also told CNN.
In addition to the 21 killed, 17 people were injured including 3 police officers.
In the absence of a medical examiner, Eulalio Diaz, a local official, was tasked with identifying the bodies late into the night, he told the daily. El Paso Times.
“Some of the children were in a bad state,” said the chosen one.
Parents awaiting news of their children provided DNA samples to speed up the identification process.
Eulalio Diaz expects that the bodies can be buried in the next 48 hours, the time to carry out the autopsies.
Tragedy
The tragedy has stunned Uvalde, a town of 16,000 inhabitants halfway between San Antonio and the Mexican border, and with a Hispanic majority, and where the American president should go soon to meet the relatives of the victims.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott revealed the murderer shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face before going to Robb Elementary School.
The killer had previously announced on Facebook his intention to attack his grandmother who, although seriously injured, managed to alert the police.
He then posted a new message to say he did. Then, at least 15 minutes before the massacre, a third to let it be known that his next target was an elementary school.
He went there equipped with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, a weapon fatally known to have been used in other massacres in the United States, such as the one in a school in Parkland, Florida, which left 18 dead.
Along the way, Salvador Ramos had a car accident, and it was there that the police tried to arrest him, in vain.
Workouts
One of the school’s teachers, present in the establishment at the time of the tragedy, told ABC that her students were watching a Disney film to celebrate the upcoming end of the school year, when shots rang out .
His students then practiced their years of training for such a situation, gathering silently under their table. Such training has become the norm in schools across the United States, where deadly shootings are repeated year after year.
With Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, CNN