Uvalde chief of police Pedro 'Pete' Arredondo speaks during a news conference on May 24. LATEST UPDATES ON THE UVALDE SCHOOL SHOOTING

“From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision,” McCraw said of the supervisor’s call not to confront the shooter. They were in the middle of the deadliest school shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre. Yet as officers stood in the hallway, children inside Robb Elementary School classrooms 111 and 112 in Uvalde repeatedly called 911 and pleaded for help, he said. The timeline of events that were part of the law enforcement response became more clear and more disturbing to the victims’ families Friday as McCraw explained the school district police chief was the incident commander who made the decision not to breach the classroom door. The Washington Post first reported the detail on the gunman emerging from the classroom closet. The agents had used a key to get into the classroom, opening the door while standing off to the side since the gunman had been shooting through the door, the source said. The gunman is believed to have waited for the agents to enter the room, then kicked open the closet door and began shooting, the source said. Members of a specialized Border Patrol unit had entered the classroom, with one holding a shield followed by at least two others who engaged the shooter, according to a US Customs and Border Protection official. The gunman was killed more than an hour after he started shooting inside Robb Elementary School. “The on-scene commander at that time believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject,” Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Col. The agents were part of a team that fatally shot the gunman, ending an attack that left 19 fourth-graders and two adults dead Tuesday afternoon.īefore the assault on the shooter, a group of 19 law enforcement officers stood in a hallway outside the classroom and took no action as they waited for room keys and tactical equipment, a state official said at a news conference.

The teenage gunman in a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school came out of a classroom closet and began firing when US Border Patrol agents entered the room more than an hour after the shooter began his rampage, a source familiar with the situation told CNN on Friday.

Locked Together by Michelle Abbott