The Uvalde shooting was the deadliest since the Sandy Hook school.
Uvalde, United States:
New harrowing stories emerged on Saturday about the ordeal faced by survivors of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
The haunting stories told by young students forced to play dead as a heavily armed gunman continued a methodical attack – killing 19 students and two teachers – were underlined by the slow police response during the drama.
Ten-year-old Samuel Salinas was in his class when the gunman, later identified as Salvador Ramos, 18, walked in with a chilling announcement: “You’re all going to die.”
Then “he just started shooting,” Salinas told ABC News.
Texas authorities admitted too late on Friday that as many as 19 police officers had been in the school hallway for more than an hour without doing anything, believing the gunman had ended his murder.
“In retrospect…it was the wrong decision, period,” said Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Ramos, who was carrying two assault-style rifles, was eventually killed by police.
Survivors of Uvalde have described making desperate, whispered pleas for help in 911 calls during his attack. Many played dead so as not to draw the shooter’s attention.
Eleven-year-old Miah Cerrillo even smeared herself with a dead friend’s blood while pretending to be dead.
Samuel Salinas said he thinks Ramos shot him, but the bullet hit a chair, sending shrapnel into the boy’s leg. “I played dead so he wouldn’t shoot me,” he said.
Another student, Daniel, whose mother refused to give his last name, said he saw Ramos shoot through the glass in the classroom door and hit his teacher.
The bullets were “hot,” he told the Washington Post, and when another bullet bounced off and hit a fellow student in the nose, he said he could hear the nauseating sound it made.
Although his teacher was bleeding on the floor, she repeatedly told the students, “Keep calm. Stay where you are. Don’t move,” Daniel recalls.
He was eventually rescued by the police who broke the windows of his classroom. He has had recurring nightmares ever since.
A disturbing timeline
President Joe Biden will visit Uvalde on Sunday to renew his case for gun control, as activists looked to get voters on the issue ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Despite the scourge of mass shootings, attempts at national gun control have repeatedly failed, though polls show broad support from Americans.
Speaking at the University of Delaware on Saturday, Biden — twice a grieving father himself — conjured up the image of parents preparing to bury their children in Texas, complaining of “too much violence. Too much fear. Too much violence.” much sadness.”
“We need to be stronger,” he told the graduates at his alma mater.
The Uvalde shooting was the deadliest since 20 children and six staff members were killed at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
McCraw revealed a series of emergency calls — including by a child begging for police help — that were made from two adjacent classrooms where the gunman had been barricaded.
But he said the commander at the time believed Ramos was there alone, with no survivors, after his first attack.
“I’m not defending anything, but you go back in the timeline. There was a barrage, hundreds of shots were pumped in four minutes, okay, in those two classrooms,” McCraw said.
“Any shooting after that was sporadic and it was on the doorstep. So the belief is that maybe no one is alive.”
However, McCraw separately told reporters that a 911 call received at 12:16 a.m. said eight or nine children were still alive.
As many as 19 officers were standing outside the classroom door at the time, according to McCraw’s timeline.
McCraw said a caller — a child who called 911 multiple times — begged for the police. Her last call was cut off as she went outside.
Texas Governor Gregg Abbott told reporters who reprimanded him during a spirited press conference Friday that he had been given inaccurate information in the wake of the massacre.
“I’ve been misled,” Abbott said. “The information I was given turned out to be partially incorrect, and I’m absolutely furious about that.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)
