Police had enough officers on the scene of the Uvalde school massacre to have stopped the gunman three minutes after he entered the building, the head of the Texas state police testified Tuesday.
Using photos of doors from Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw testifies at a Texas Senate hearing at the state capitol, Tuesday, June 21, 2022, in Austin, Texas. Two teachers and 19 students were killed in last month's mass shooting in Uvalde.
“I don’t care if you have on flip-flops and Bermuda shorts, you go in,” Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in blistering testimony at a state Senate hearing. Delays in the law enforcement response at Robb Elementary School have become the focus of federal, state and local investigations., the Uvalde school district police chief who McCraw said was in charge, saying: “The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering Room 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.
The public safety chief presented a timeline that said three officers with two rifles entered the building less than three minutes behind the gunman, an 18-year-old with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle. Several more officers entered minutes after that. Two of the officers who went into the hallway early on were grazed by gunfire.
Eight minutes after the shooter entered, an officer reported that police had a heavy duty crowbar that they could use to break down the classroom door, McCraw said.
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