By Jon Schuppe, Erik Ortiz, Deon J. Hampton and Suzanne Gamboa -
NBC News
Most active shootings in the United States are over in five minutes.
The attack on the Uvalde primary school lasted an hour.
It was the time that the police waited for reinforcements on Tuesday instead of acting against the murderer, who killed 19 children and two teachers.
That revelation, which a Texas law enforcement official admitted Thursday, has angered parents, who wonder if a quicker response could have saved lives.
And it has confused the experts.
They say the delay deviates from standard police practice, which ensures
officers must do everything they can, as quickly as they can, to stop a shooter's assault.
Police run near Robb Elementary School after a shooting Tuesday, May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas.AP
"Waiting an hour is disgusting," said Sean Burke, a recently retired officer from Lawrence, Mass., and president of the School Safety Advocacy Council, which trains districts on how to respond to shootings.
"If that turns out to be true, then it's a disgusting fact," he added.
The authorities have offered confusing, fragmented and contradictory versions of the attack.
His latest version, explained at a press conference on Thursday, described the agents asking for help (armor, snipers, negotiators) while the gunman kept them away with shots from inside the classroom.
Victor Escalon, the South Texas director for the state Department of Public Safety, said the 18-year-old gunman walked safely into Robb Elementary School Tuesday morning, 12 minutes after he crashed his grandmother's truck and opened fire. against people near the school.
Police officers from the city and school district arrived four minutes later but left after the gunman shot them, Escalon said.
The killer then entered a classroom without resistance and opened fire on the children and teachers, while returning fire at the police.
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“They didn't go in that first moment because of the shots they were taking,
” Escalon said, “but we had officers asking for additional resources, everyone who was in the area, tactical teams — we needed teams, special teams, bulletproof vests, sharpshooters negotiators."
While they waited for reinforcements, police helped evacuate children from other parts of the school, he added.
In the classroom where the shooter was entrenched, however, the children were killed.
Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez said Thursday that his officers "responded within minutes" and that one officer was injured.
"I understand that questions are being raised about the details of what happened. I know that answers will not come quickly enough during this difficult time, but rest assured that with the completion of the investigation, I will be able to answer as many questions as we can." Rodriguez wrote.
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Members of the school district police department did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Burke and other experts said waiting for help reflects outdated thinking about how to respond to shootings.
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Waiting for specialized tactical units used to be standard practice for responding to shooters.
This changed after the 1999 Columbine school shooting in Colorado, when police waited nearly an hour for a special forces SWAT team to enter the building,
during which time 12 students and a teacher were killed.
To save time and save lives, the police began dispatching the first four or five officers who arrived.
That rule has changed again in recent years to emphasize that officers must do everything they can to stop shooters, even if they're alone and without backup.
In mass shootings, time is precious.
An FBI study of 160 active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013 found that the majority of attacks whose duration could be determined ended in five minutes or less, with about half lasting no more than two minutes.
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Ronald Stewart, a trauma surgeon at San Antonio University Hospital who coordinated the treatment of four Uvalde victims, said acting quickly to stop the bleeding can make all the difference in a victim's survival.
Uncontrolled bleeding is the leading preventable cause of death in shootings, and it can happen in as little as five minutes.
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"You can't wait for patients to go to a trauma center," he said.
“You have to act quickly,” she added.
The gunman from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, raged in February 2018 for about six minutes before escaping and being apprehended an hour later.
The Santa Fe, Texas, high school shooter was arrested 30 minutes after he was attacked in May 2018.
"If you have someone that you believe is actively engaged in harming people or trying to harm people, your obligation as a police officer is to immediately arrest that person and neutralize that threat," said Don Alwes, a former National Association of Tactical Officers instructor. .
"We don't expect police officers to kill themselves by doing it. But the expectation is that if someone is about to hurt someone, especially children, immediate action has to be taken to make it stop," he added.
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Experts stressed that much remains unknown about what happened at the school and why officers felt the need to call for help rather than find another way to stop the gunman.
Escalon did not address those issues.
He claimed that most of the shooting in the classroom occurred early in the siege and then tapered off during the time officers called for backup.
The gunman did not respond to officers' attempts to negotiate, Escalon said.
Some public officials cautioned against judging the police response without knowing exactly what happened.
Three girls visit a memorial site for the victims killed in the elementary school shooting Thursday, May 26, 2022.AP
Robert Mac Donald, Uvalde Police Chief from 2010 to 2013, said investigators will have to determine what contributed to officers being unable to apprehend the gunman once he was inside the classroom.
He said he understands why state investigators may not want to rush into providing a timeline of events if they are still corroborating what happened between multiple law enforcement agencies that responded.
"The important thing is that they get together and make the information known," Mac Donald stressed, "if mistakes were made, you have to investigate it and let people know what happened so it doesn't happen again."
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U.S. Representative Tony Gonzales, a Republican whose district includes Uvalde, said in an interview before Thursday's news conference that authorities had told him the attack was in a "moment of calm" when officers outside began to ask for help.
"So they're thinking, 'OK, we've got it contained,' and they're like, 'How do we get all the kids out? And that's when the rest of the school is evacuating. So they think he's not out there shooting, and they're just waiting, waiting for reinforcements," he said.
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The first officers to arrive on the scene may have been overwhelmed by a lack of training or proper equipment, said Steve Nottingham, a retired Long Beach, Calif., police lieutenant who trains tactical units.
But in that situation, he said, officers have to come up with ways to distract a shooter from victims, perhaps by breaking a classroom window.
"You have to start thinking differently with something like that," he said, "if you don't interfere with the shooter, you just cause more casualties."
Police should have already developed a plan for what to do in these kinds of situations -- so they can mobilize quickly, said Randy Braverman, an emergency preparedness specialist who teaches school safety in Illinois.
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"You're going to have to explain why it took you an hour. Why didn't you get in right away? Why did it take you so long to get in?"
Braverman added.
"They may have a good explanation, but it seems like a long time to get in," he concluded.
"If he's killing people, you have to go in," he added, "so one question is: when were these guys shot?"
Escalon's account contradicted previous descriptions of the gunman's approach to the school, in which authorities said he was "approached" by a school resource officer.
Escalon said that did not happen.
"He did not face anyone," he assured.
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Law enforcement has previously said the gunman locked the door to the classroom where the massacre took place and that
police were unable to open it until a school official brought them a skeleton key
.
Escalón did not mention that Thursday, saying only that the siege ended after an hour, when a Customs and Border Protection tactical unit shot and killed the gunman.
Law enforcement authorities told NBC News that the officers and agents stormed the classroom behind a shield, killing the gunman.
A Border Patrol agent was injured by the shots.
The long siege has angered the parents of the schoolchildren, some of whom clashed with officers outside the school.
Javier Cazares, the father of a fourth grader who died, recalled running to the school after hearing about the attack and joining other parents gathered outside, where they heard gunshots.
Feeling the need to do something, Cazares and several other parents wondered if they should go in themselves and rescue the young students.
More officers arrived and pushed the parents away from the school.
"From what I saw, they didn't go in as fast as they should have," he said, "once they heard gunshots, they should have gone in quickly."
Frustration and anger over the response have spread throughout the city.
Minerva Castro, 59, the mother of a high school student who has lived in Uvalde for decades, visited a memorial for the dead children on Thursday.
"If they had acted quickly, it might not have happened," he said.
