The police made a “bad decision” by not quickly entering the Uvalde school where a gunman had taken refuge in a class who committed a massacre there, a senior Texan official admitted on Friday.
“Looking back now, of course it wasn’t the right decision. It was the wrong decision, period,” Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told a tense press conference.
“If I thought it could help, I would apologize,” he said, very moved.
Nineteen officers at the scene waited for a Border Police intervention unit, about an hour after the shooter, Salvador Ramos, broke into the building on Tuesday. The 18-year-old teenager killed 19 children and two teachers.
Pressed by journalists to explain this highly criticized delay in intervention, the official said that the police thought “there may be no more survivors”.
The police nevertheless received numerous calls from several people in the two affected classrooms, including one from a child at 12:16 p.m., more than half an hour before the police intervention at 12:50 p.m., warning that ” eight to nine students were alive,” McCraw said.
During one of her first calls, this pupil, who had warned that there were several deaths, asked: “please send the police now”.
“Family Pain”
A few hours away, America’s premier gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, held its annual convention in Houston, rocked by controversy over the timing of the event, which prompted politicians and movie stars country music to cancel their visit.
The NRA promised that this high mass would be an opportunity to “reflect” on what happened in Uvalde – a tragedy for which the organization had cleared itself of all responsibility.
While former President Donald Trump will attend, as will conservative state Senator Ted Cruz, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott will instead give Uvalde a press conference.
Mr. Abbott, a great defender of the right to own a firearm and a candidate for re-election this year, will still speak to members of the NRA, in a pre-recorded video, said one of his spokespersons to the newspaper. Dallas Morning News.
His deputy, Dan Patrick, will also not show up to avoid “adding more pain to the families,” he said in a statement.
By late morning, thousands of firearms enthusiasts were already strolling through the vast convention center filled with manufacturers’ booths, displaying semi-automatic rifles and hunting gear.
“I have guns in every room of my house,” laughed a man in his 60s when asked if the gun he was considering buying would be his first.
A sign of discomfort, several country stars have also chosen not to come. Among them, the singer Don McLean, known for his song “American Pie”, who judged that it would be “disrespectful” for him to perform there.
Artist Lee Greenwood, whose patriotic hit “God Bless the USA” punctuates Donald Trump’s meetings, also preferred to cancel his concert.
Another notable absentee was the maker of the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle used by the shooter.
The NRA, which claims 5 million members, has also specified that to ensure the safety of Mr. Trump – to whom the organization has given tens of millions of dollars during his two presidential campaigns – firearms would be prohibited in the room.