A new report is claiming that a police officer had the Uvalde mass shooter in his sights just prior to the shooting but failed to pull the trigger.
On May 24, Salvador Rolando Ramos entered Robb Elementary School and killed 19 children and two teachers.
On Wednesday, Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training conducted a review of the law enforcement response to the incident, according to NBC News. ALERRT regularly reviews such situations.
The study found “several significant errors” made by law enforcement prior to Ramos entering the school.
After Ramos had already opened fire outside the school, an officer had him in his sights.
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Ramos walked into the parking lot after crashing his truck around 11:30 a.m. and “fired through windows into the westmost rooms prior to entering the building,” according to the ALERRT report.
A Uvalde police officer saw him outside the entrance to the school. Before firing, however, the officer asked his supervisor for permission.
“The supervisor either did not hear or responded too late. The officer turned to get confirmation from his supervisor and when he turned back to address the suspect, he had entered the west hallway unabated.”
The report noted that Texas law allows officers to shoot would-be attackers in order to “prevent the commission of murder.”
In the weeks since the shooting, the law enforcement response has come under intense scrutiny.
Was the Uvalde shooting a law enforcement failure?
During a special committee meeting in the Texas Senate on June 21, it was revealed that officers were ready to breach the classroom where Ramos was located three minutes after the shooter entered the school.
However, because an on-scene commander refused to give the go-ahead, officers waited one hour, 14 minutes and eight seconds before breaching the room.
“There’s compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary was an abject failure, and antithetical to everything we’ve learned over the past two decades since the Columbine massacre,” Steve McGraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in prepared testimony.
Abject failure.
The words used by Texas DPS Director Steve McGraw in a scathing evisceration of the police response in #Uvalde, specifically, the on-scene commander.
This is during testimony for special called Texas Senate committee meeting. pic.twitter.com/FUJSaDFvq9
— Chris Sadeghi (@chrissadeghi) June 21, 2022
“Three minutes after the subject entered the west building, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the subject.”
The only thing stopping them from acting was the on-scene commander, who “decided to place the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children,” McGraw said.
