Source: Anadolu Agency / Getty
Onlookers of the deadly Uvalde, Texas shooting are saying that police didn’t enter Robb Elementary School as quickly as they should have. Shortly after accused killer Salvador Ramos began shooting, police arrived and were gathered outside of the school and didn’t charge in immediately.
Once Javier Cazares, whose daughter was killed in the massacre, arrived to the school after hearing about the shooting, he said police were still standing outside.
“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” he told the Associated Press. “More could have been done. They were unprepared.”
Juan Carranza, who lives across the street from Robb Elementary, also said police should’ve entered quickly.
“There were more of them. There was just one of him,” he said.
Carranza added that a woman even shouted “Go in there! Go in there!” as they police stood outside. He also saw when Salvador Ramos arrived, grabbed his AR-15 rifle and shot at two people at a nearby funeral home. They were uninjured.
Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw denied that police didn’t act urgently.
“The bottom line is law enforcement was there,” McCraw told the AP. “They did engage immediately. They did contain Ramos in the classroom.”
A video posted on Washington Post Instagram tells a perplexing story
Before arriving to the school, Ramos, 18, shot his grandmother in the face at their home before he sped off to Robb Elementary. She is currently hospitalized.
While police are still trying to figure out what Ramos’ motive was, a neighbor said that he was angry he couldn’t graduate from Uvalde High School the week prior.
Ramos’ mother Adriana Reyes said she had noticed her son was a bit troubled, but he was “not a monster.”
“I had an uneasy feeling sometimes, like ‘what are you up to?” Reyes told ABC News. “He can be aggressive… If he really got mad.”
She also wasn’t aware that Ramos had purchased two guns shortly after his 18th birthday.
“Anyone who shoots his grandmother in the face has to have evil in his heart,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said during a press conference on May 25. “But it is far more evil for someone to gun down little kids.”
One thing Abbott was able to confirm was that Ramos warned that he was going on a rampage on Facebook.
“As of this time, the only information that was known in advance was posted by the gunman on Facebook approximately 30 minutes before reaching the school,” Abbott said on Wednesday. “The first post was…he said ‘I’m going to shoot my grandmother,’ the second post was ‘I shot my grandmother,’ the third post, maybe less than 15 minutes before arriving at the school was ‘I’m going to shoot an elementary school.'”
Ramos is accused of killing 19 children, two teachers and leaving 17 injured during the nearly 40-minute mas shooting. He was killed by a Border Patrol team, AP noted.
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