Shocking new video has emerged showing Texas cops restraining parents as they tried to rescue their kids on Tuesday after a gunman unleashed terror inside the elementary school, as questions grow over why it took police an hour to get to the shooter after the first 911 call.
Salvador Ramos, 18, arrived at the school in Uvalde at 11.30am, crashing his car into a ditch.
A school resource officer was at the scene but he failed to stop him from making his way inside.
Two other cops also rushed to the school at that time – Ramos had just shot his grandmother in the face at their home less than five miles away. She survived and called the police.
When they arrived, he shot at them then ran into the school and barricaded himself in the fourth grade classroom where he shot 19 kids and two teachers dead.
He spent nearly an hour in there before he was finally shot by a hero border patrol agent.
Police struggled to get inside and had to wait for a teacher to open the door with a key, according to an anonymous law enforcement source cited by NPR on Thursday. It remains unclear how many kids were in the room when Ramos entered.
One child told KENS 5 that he was able to hide under a desk, but that a girl who yelled out ‘help’ when police arrived was executed.
‘When the cops came, the cop said: “Yell if you need help!” And one of the persons in my class said ‘help.’ The guy overheard and he came in and shot her. The cop barged into that classroom. The guy shot at the cop. And the cops started shooting,’ the boy said.
A boy who was inside the classroom and survived says cops told them to yell for help, but when one girl did it attracted the shooter to her and she was killed. The boy’s face was not shown in his interview
In the hour before that, parents started rushing to the school to try to get their kids out. They arrived to find a gaggle of armed police standing outside.
One shocking video shows them even holding some parents back as they tried to get inside. The footage shows a parent being pinned to the ground by an officer, while another carrying a taser stands guard nearby.
Other footages shows parents begging the cops: ‘What are you doing!? Get inside the building!’
Another woman could be heard to say ‘They’re trapped inside’ as howls of pained anguish rang out in the background.
It was unclear at what time the footage was shot. It also emerged Wednesday that Customs and Border Patrol agents who rushed to the scene had to grab a key from school staff to open the door of the classroom where the bloodbath took place.
That is because they were unable to break the door down themselves.
The first 911 call was received at 11:32am on Tuesday, and the gunman was killed at 1pm – after a Border Patrol agent was given a key to the door, behind which the gunman was barricaded with the fourth grade class.
Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack, said he raced to the school when he heard about the shooting, arriving while police were still gathered outside the building.
Upset that police were not moving in, he raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders.
‘Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,’ he said.
‘More could have been done. They were unprepared.’
He added: ‘There was at least 40 lawmen armed to the teeth but didn’t do a darn thing until it was far too late.
‘The situation could’ve been over quick if they had better tactical training, and we as a community witnessed it firsthand.’
One woman was yelling at the police outside the school, said Juan Carranza, 24, who lives opposite.
He said she was screaming: ‘Go in there! Go in there!’
Carranza said the officers did not go in.
Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told reporters that 40 minutes to an hour elapsed from when Salvador Ramos, 18, opened fire on the school security officer to when the tactical team shot him, though a department spokesman said later that they could not give a solid estimate of how long the gunman was in the school or when he was killed.
‘The bottom line is law enforcement was there,’ McCraw said.
‘They did engage immediately. They did contain (Ramos) in the classroom.’
Meanwhile, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told AP the Border Patrol agents had trouble breaching the classroom door and had to get a staff member to open the room with a key.
Cazares said he wanted answers from local authorities as to why the shooter was not stopped before or during the attack.
‘I’m a gun owner and I do not blame the weapons used in this tragedy,’ he said.
‘I’m angry how easy it is to get one and young you can be to purchase one.’
The massacre is the worst school shooting in the United States since Sandy Hook in 2012, when 20 children and six teachers were killed.
Ramos on Tuesday first shot his 66-year-old grandmother Cecilia Gonzalez in the face, leaving her severely injured, before stealing her pickup truck and driving towards the school.
Unable to drive, he crashed into a ditch and then ran to the school on foot, where he was met by an armed security guard.
Yet he was still able to enter the school and kill 21 people – and was not stopped until around 1pm, when a Border Patrol agent backed up by a tactical team shot him dead.
One of those involved in training schools how to deal with an active shooter lost his wife in Tuesday’s tragedy.
Ruben Ruiz, 43, a veteran detective and SWAT team member, works as a police officer for the school district, and on March 22 held an active shooter drill at the school.
His wife Eva Mireles, 44, was one of the two teachers killed by Ramos on Tuesday.
Uvalde, home to 16,000 people, is 80 miles west of San Antonio.
Steve McCraw, director of the Texas department of public safety (DPS), said on Wednesday that a ‘brave’ school resource officer ‘approached him’ and ‘engaged him’ – but added that ‘gunfire was not exchanged.’ He did not explain why.
The New York Times reported that their sources said at least one armed law enforcement officer from the Uvalde school district was at the school, and that officer exchanged gunfire with the gunman, but the gunman was able to get past.
Ramos was carrying an AR-type rifle, which he had bought the week before, on turning 18.
He purchased one of the rifles on May 17, and the following day he bought 375 rounds of 5.56mm ammunition. Ramos purchased another rifle on May 20, and posted pictures of the guns on Instagram.
He was also wearing ‘a tactical vest carrier with no ballistic panels,’ said Lt. Chris Olivarez, the DPS’s spokesperson.
Ramos then made it into the school, running down a hallway to two adjoining classrooms.
He barricaded himself inside the fourth grade classroom run by teachers Irma Garcia, 46, and Mireles.
‘And that’s where the carnage began,’ McCraw said.
All of the 19 children who died were inside the one classroom.
Officers were unable to enter it, The New York Times said.
Olivarez said some of the officers were shot by the gunman, so others began breaking windows around the school trying to evacuate children and teachers.
Ramos remained there until a tactical unit from the Border Patrol killed the gunman, shortly after 1pm, according to state police reports.
Olivarez said ‘tactical law enforcement’ forced their way into the classroom, where ‘they were met with gunfire as well, but they were able to shoot and kill that suspect.’
The unnamed agent who shot and killed Ramos is believed to be from the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC), which has specialized agents dispersed throughout the United States.
The BORTAC agent, whose identity has not yet been revealed, rushed into the school without waiting for backup.
Ramos was behind a barricade, returning fire, but the border patrol agent managed to shoot and kill the gunman before he could claim more victims.
hey came in from opposite sides. The BORTAC agent ended up exchanging gunfire with the shooter, killed the shooter, and I am told that the agent was injured in his leg,’ Olivarez told Fox News .
‘They are trying to figure out if he was shot in the leg or hit by shrapnel.’
BORTAC is headquartered in El Paso, Texas, and the U.S.-Mexico border is only 80 miles away – explaining the presence of the agent from the unusual tactical unit.
The unit is unique in that it conducts training and operations both in the United States and in other countries ‘in furtherance of the US Border Patrol’s mission’, according to CBP.
Multiple teams of Border Patrol agents raced to the school, according to Jason Owens, a top regional official with the Border Patrol.
A number of the shooting victims are children of Customs and Border Protection agents.
‘It hit home for everybody,’ said Owens.
McCraw praised the officers and denied there had been a failure – emphasizing that the arriving officers ‘engaged him’ and were able to ‘keep him pinned down in that location.’
Asked about the delay, he replied: ‘Obviously, this is situation we failed in the sense that we didn’t prevent this mass attack.
‘But I can tell you those officers that arrived on the scene and put their lives in danger — they saved other kids.
‘They kept him pinned down.’
He said the team was ‘very proud’ of that.