Pressure grows on the Uvalde police chief after the massacre

Texas Governor Greg Abbott during a press conference at the killing school in Uvalde this Friday. VERONICA CARDENAS (REUTERS)

Texas police acknowledged Friday that their response to the Uvalde school shooting could have been frankly more effective.

In a climate of growing pressure, four days after the murder of 19 children and two teachers at the hands of a teenager armed with a semi-automatic rifle, the assumption of responsibilities is close to claiming a first name.

Pedro Arredondo, the police chief of the Uvalde Independent School District, the school's tiny security force, was the one who made the decision to wait more than an hour for the arrival of a special tactical team.

A decision described as "wrong" by the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Steven McCraw, in a press conference after which he ended up crying.

The governor, Greg Abbott, who initially closed ranks with the agents,

The details released about the police action have increased the pressure on the authorities.

Relatives questioned from the beginning the delay in the police response.

Many parents gathered at the school gate and witnessed the containment strategy, more focused on protecting the perimeter so that parents did not enter the premises than on acting directly against the aggressor, who locked himself in two interconnected classrooms .

It was not until an hour had passed that the special tactical team shot down Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old teenager who perpetrated the massacre.

Abbott himself first defended the police operation as a "rapid response" that prevented more deaths.

The governor was, however, forced to rectify on Friday afternoon after knowing the details of the intervention.

On his second visit to Uvalde after the tragedy, Abbott said he felt "deceived" after the first version of events.

“The information they gave me turned out not to be entirely accurate.

I am completely disappointed," he announced after suspending his presence at the convention of the National Rifle Association, the largest gun

, which opened this year in the Texas city of Houston on Friday, three days after the Uvalde shooting.

From 11.30 on the fateful Tuesday, the police received the first alert.

At that time, practically the same as the aggressor broke into the school, several teachers called the police emergency number.

The reconstruction of the events announced by the authorities also confirmed that the calls were made by some of the children inside the classrooms.

Up to four calls came from room 112 from the same student in a period of 13 minutes.

In one of the messages she warned that there were “many dead”.

In another, at 12:16, nine students were still alive.

Despite the alerts, the police decided to wait more than 40 minutes before intervening, assuming that there were no children at risk.

An assumption that has been tragically proven wrong.

"More children's lives could have been saved," says Adrian Alonzo, the uncle of one of the girls who died in the massacre, 10-year-old Ellie Garcia.

In this small town, where families should be preparing for the summer after school ends this week, parents are nonetheless mourning the unthinkable loss of their children.

Despite growing criticism of the authorities' actions, Alonzo, a 38-year-old public office worker, prefers to look to the future by trusting the police.

"You have to support them so that they improve and that something like this never happens again," adds the uncle.

The role of the Uvalde Independent School District, made up of police chief Arredondo, a detective and four officers, all of them armed, is being reviewed.

The Texas government initially assured that one of these police officers was the first agent with whom the shooter had contact.

A version that was corrected over the days.

Until he came to recognize that 19 agents were in the corridor, with the aggressor inside the class, on the other side of the door, for about 45 minutes.

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