Investigators question delayed police response in Texas school shooting

Investigators in Texas were seeking to determine on Saturday how critical mistakes were made in the response to the deadly Uvalde shooting, including why nearly 20 police officers remained outside a school classroom as children placed panicked 911 calls for help.

Why the officers waited in the hallway nearly an hour before entering and fatally shooting the gunman is at the heart of an ongoing investigation by the Texas Department of Public Safety into the massacre of 19 children and two teachers in the deadliest US school shooting in nearly a decade.

Investigators are also still searching for a motive for the attack. Salvador Ramos, a high school dropout, had no criminal record and no history of mental illness.

At least two children placed 911 calls from a pair of adjoining fourth-grade classrooms after 18-year-old Ramos entered on Tuesday with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, Colonel Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said earlier this week.

“He’s in room 112,” a girl whispered on the phone at 12:03pm, more than 45 minutes before a US Border Patrol-led tactical team stormed in at 12:51pm and ended the siege at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, a town of 16,000 people west of San Antonio.

The same girl had implored the 911 operator to “please send the police now” at 12:43pm and again four minutes later.

The on-site commander, the chief of the school district’s police department, believed at the time that Ramos was barricaded inside and that children were no longer at immediate risk, giving officers time to prepare, McCraw said.

“From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course, it was not the right decision,” McCraw said. “It was the wrong decision, period.”