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'We are in problems'. 80 minutes of horror at Robb Elementary School

2022-05-30T10:07:37.930Z


The attacker entered Robb Elementary School, fired more than 100 shots and killed 19 children and two teachers last Tuesday. He was shot down an hour later.


This account of events surrounding the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas is based on official statements, interviews with parents, witnesses, law enforcement and local officials, and other reporting by CNN and its news affiliates. .

(CNN) --

Two days before the end of the academic year, students at Robb Elementary School dressed in their Sunday best for a "Footloose and Fancy" event -- a prelude to an anticipated summer of movies. drive-ins, lakeside barbecues, and trips to amusement parks.

On Tuesday morning, as 10-year-old fourth graders like Xavier Javier López and Alexandria "Lexi" Rubio received honor roll certificates and other awards, a lone gunman named Salvador Ramos was home with his grandmother in Uvalde, a small, tight-knit Texas town located roughly halfway between San Antonio and the Mexican border.

In a matter of hours, the young aspiring lawyers, police officers, dancers and biologists of Robb Elementary would cross paths with the high school dropout who gifted himself two AR-15-style rifles and hundreds of cartridges he legally purchased for his 18th birthday a week earlier. .

At 11:33 a.m., Ramos entered the school, unhindered, through a back door that a teacher had left open.

He fired more than 100 shots at the school and in two adjoining classrooms.

A Border Patrol tactical team shot him down more than an hour after the terror began.

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The massacre claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers in the deadliest school shooting in the United States in nearly a decade.

Disturbing details of what happened emerge almost daily.

A parent met with other distraught parents outside the school.

He begged the officers to give him equipment so he could confront the attacker himself.

An 11-year-old survivor played dead after smearing herself with her friend's blood.

The attacker looked a teacher in the eye.

"Good night," she said coldly before killing her.

A memorial for the victims of Tuesday's mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.

Grieving parents planned funerals while complaining about the delayed response.

Security force officials offered contradictory explanations for days.

A public safety department colonel admitted Friday that waiting in a school hallway while trapped students made 911 calls was a "wrong decision" by the commanding officer on the scene.

It is unclear how many lives the mistake may have cost.

Uvalde's nearly 16,000 working-class, mostly Latino residents are now the last mourners in an eerily familiar American tragedy.

"It was something I never want to see again," said Judge Eulalio "Lalo" Diaz, who, as Uvalde County justice of the peace, was tasked with identifying the children and teachers slain in a county without a medical examiner.

"These are our children."

'You just have to wait'

Ramos had no criminal record, had few friends and was very secretive.

But in the weeks leading up to the massacre, he exhibited a dark side in

livestreams

on the Yubo social media app.

Several users who watched the latest videos said that he had told the girls that he would rape them, that he had shown a rifle that he had bought, and that he had threatened to shoot up the schools.

They didn't take it seriously until now.

  • Uvalde attacker would have published a photo of rifles on Instagram

At around 11 am on Tuesday he called a 15-year-old girl in Germany.

He had befriended her earlier in the month on the social media app.

The young man and the teenager from Frankfurt spoke daily on FaceTime.

They also communicated on Yubo and played games and chatted on the Plato gaming app.

The young man was curious about life in Germany.

He confessed that he spent a lot of time alone at home.

"He seemed happy and comfortable talking to me," said the girl, whose mother gave permission to be interviewed.

Still, some talk alarmed her.

She admitted to throwing dead cats into houses.

And she never mentioned plans to meet up with friends.

In videos and text messages, Ramos talked about visiting his new friend in Europe.

One message included a flight itinerary.

"I'm going soon," he wrote.

On Monday, Ramos told the girl that she had received a package of bullets that expanded as they entered tissue.

Why? she asked.

"You just have to wait," he said ominously.

The next day, on the call just after 11 a.m. of the shooting, he told the girl he loved her.

Screenshots of messages Ramos sent shortly after the call show that he complained that his grandmother had contacted AT&T on "my phone."

"It's annoying," he wrote.

At 11:06 in the morning a chilling message arrived: "I just shot my grandmother in the head."

The last message to her new online

friend

was at 11:21 local time, which is early afternoon in Germany: "I'm going to shoot" a primary school.

The attacker opens fire and enters the school

The attacker drove a pickup truck onto the school campus and crashed it into a ditch.

With just a few days left in the school year, students in grades two through four at Robb Elementary collected their awards on Tuesday morning.

The children smiled and posed for photos.

Students watched Disney's "Lilo & Stitch" in the final days of a long semester.

Less than a mile away, Ramos — after shooting his 66-year-old grandmother in the face and texting her German friend one last time — drove a van onto the school campus and crashed it. in a ditch

It was 11:28 in the morning, local time.

He opened fire on two people outside a funeral home across the street, but missed them.

Her grandmother managed to call 911. She was airlifted to a San Antonio hospital and is expected to survive.

Derek González was near the school when he heard the shots.

"Shots! Shots!" he recalls a woman yelling outside as bullets hit the ground.

The moment the attacker enters the Texas school 0:55

Within minutes, Ramos walked from the highway to the school parking lot and began firing at classroom windows.

Moments before he opened the rear door of the building, which was unlocked, a school security officer in a patrol car drove past the attacker, who had crouched behind a car.

At 11:33 a.m., Ramos walked down a hallway and into one of two adjoining classrooms, 111 and 112. At no time since the truck crashed have police confronted him.

Minutes later, seven officers arrived at the school.

Three officers approached the closed classroom where the attacker had barricaded himself.

Two officers were shot from behind a door and suffered graze wounds.

A volley of more than 100 shots rang through the halls of Robb Elementary in the first minutes of the shooting.

It was at least the 30th shooting at elementary, middle and high schools this year.

Said "goodnight" then shot the teacher

Girl recounted what she did when the attacker was in the classroom 0:50

Miah Cerrillo, 11, was watching a Disney movie with his classmates.

Alerted to the presence of an attacker in the building, teachers Eva Mireles and Irma García mobilized to protect their young students.

When one of the teachers tried to close the door to the classroom, the attacker fired through the window in the door.

The teacher stepped back and the attacker followed her.

She told him "Good night" and shot him.

He turned and opened fire on the other teacher and Miah's classmates.

The girl cried for moments and wrapped herself in a blanket as she remembered the horror.

She heard screams and more gunshots as the attacker entered a connected classroom.

Between shots, the gunman played music that Miah described as "sad, like she wants people to die."

Miah feared that he would come back for her and some surviving friends.

He covered his hands with the blood of a comrade killed next to her and smeared himself with it.

She played dead.

At one point, Miah and a classmate managed to use their dead teacher's phone to call 911.

"Please come," he told the operator.

"We are in problems".

  • With a broken voice, official recounts the chronology of several calls to 911 during the shooting in Uvalde

The commander made "the wrong decision"

By the time the students began making 911 calls, as many as 19 law enforcement officers had already taken cover in the hallway, at 12:03 pm They took no action and waited for classroom keys and tactical gear.

At 12:16 p.m., a girl who made multiple calls to 911 told a dispatcher that eight or nine children were alive in her classroom.

"The commander on scene at the time believed he had gone from an active shooter to a barricaded subject," Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Col. Steven McCraw said Friday, describing the call not to confront the attacker as "the wrong decision, period".

"There is no excuse for that," he added.

Steven McCraw, director and colonel of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said the decision not to confront the attacker sooner was a mistake.

The official who made the decision not to break into the classroom was school district police chief Pedro "Pete" Arredondo, who has not spoken publicly since two very brief statements to the press the day of the shooting.

He has three decades of law enforcement experience.

There was no response to attempts to contact Arredondo at his home on Friday.

  • Attention is focused on the Uvalde school police chief's decision not to send officers inside.

    This is what we know about him

Before the noon hour was over Tuesday, at least 10 911 calls were made from classrooms, including several from the same girl asking for help.

At one point she whispered that several bodies were surrounding her in room 112.

Amerie Jo Garza turned 10 weeks before the attack.

She was given the first mobile phone of hers.

Her classmates later told her stepfather, medical assistant Angel Garza, that she was killed while trying to call 911.

"I was just trying to call the authorities," Angel Garza said, sobbing as he held up a photo of Amerie with a certificate of honor.

"I just want people to know that he died trying to save his teammates."

The chaos spread outside the school

Students run to safety after escaping through a window at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday.

During the siege, some of the responding officers helped evacuate students and faculty in other parts of the school.

  • Uvalde teacher: "I told the parents, their children are my children"

Frustrated parents gathered outside during the assault.

They urged the officers holding them to break into the school to stop the bloodshed.

One of the parents, Víctor Luna, begged the agents to hand over his equipment.

His son Jayden survived the shooting, but he didn't know that at the time.

Luna and other parents nervously watched as the officers escorted the students out of the school.

Video from the scene shows officers physically restraining some parents.

Video shows parents frustrated with police at scene of Texas shooting 4:02

Throughout the night, distraught families gathered at the SSGT Willie de Leon Civic Center, where buses delivered survivors.

DNA samples were collected from the parents to confirm whether their children were among the victims.

As the death toll mounted, relatives who watched for hours as their sons and daughters were reunited walked sobbing from the makeshift reunification center.

Doctors treat "destructive wounds"

AR-15 rounds struck the heart of a small town.

Xavier and Lexi, the honor roll students, were among the victims.

Like the teachers Mireles and García, who had taught together for five years.

Two days after Garcia's death, her husband, Joe, suffered a fatal heart attack.

His relatives said that he died of a broken heart.

Other young victims included Jose Flores Jr, 10, and Eliana "Ellie" Garcia, 9. Nevaeh Alyssa Bravo was 10 years old.

Jacklyn Jaylen Cazares, 10, was killed along with her 10-year-old cousin and classmate Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez.

Also there were Makenna Lee Elrod, 10;

Uziyah Garcia, 10 years old;

Jayce Carmelo Luevanos, 10 years old;

Tess Marie Mata, 10 years old;

Maranda Mathis, 11 years old;

Alithia Ramírez, 10 years old;

Maite Rodríguez, 10 years old;

Layla Salazar, 11 years old;

Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10 years old;

Eliahana 'Elijah' Cruz Torres, 10, and Rogelio Torres, 10.

These are the faces of those killed in the attack.

Nearly 20 people were injured in the attack with a rifle that has been used in some of the most notorious and deadly mass murders in recent history.

The AR-15-style rifle was designed to maximize your kill rate by blasting through enemy soldiers with high-velocity bullets.

The original designers explained that the speed of impact causes the bullet to spin after penetrating tissue.

The result: catastrophic injuries.

"We were treating destructive wounds and what that means is that large areas of tissue were missing from the body," said Dr. Lillian Liao, medical director of pediatric trauma at San Antonio University Hospital, who treated three children from Uvalde.

"They needed an emergency operation because there was significant blood loss."

  • This doctor travels to schools after mass shootings.

    He listens to his advice to parents

It was hard knowing that many victims were probably already dead when the police killed the attacker.

"When it comes to high-velocity firearm injuries, we may not have many patients," he said, wiping away tears.

"I think that is what has affected us the most. Not the patients that we do receive and that we have the honor to treat ... but the patients that we do not receive."

A grieving father only has one question

Mourners attend a memorial service for the victims of the school attack on Friday.

In total, 80 minutes elapsed between the time agents were first called at 11:30 a.m. and the time a federal tactical team entered the locked classrooms and killed the shooter at 12:50 p.m. hours.

To Miah, the 11-year-old survivor, it seemed like three hours.

She was there, on the classroom floor, covered in a classmate's blood.

At 12:43 pm and again four minutes later, a girl from the school called 911.

"Please send the police now," he implored.

It is unclear if it was Miah who was on the line.

After waiting about 35 minutes outside the classroom, a US Border Patrol tactical team used a key to open a door.

They had been at the school since 12:15 pm The armed teen kicked open a classroom locker door and opened fire, a source familiar with the situation said.

An agent held a shield.

At least two others behind him engaged the attacker.

"He's going to haunt them forever," the source said, referring to responding officers and what they saw at the scene.

The siege was over.

  • Timeline of the massacre in Uvalde, Texas: two hours of violence

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott earlier in the week praised the "incredible courage" of responding officers.

On Friday he was in Uvalde for a press conference in which he announced state aid for families affected by the shooting.

Abbott, who had canceled his appearance that day at the National Rifle Association convention 280 miles (450 kilometers) away in Houston, said he was "absolutely furious" at being initially "misled" about the police response. .

In the chaos outside the school Tuesday, Ángel Garza, the medical assistant, came across a girl covered in blood.

She was crying.

Her best friend had been murdered.

Amerie Jo Garza, 10, with her stepfather, Ángel Garza.

Ángel Garza asked him the name of the dead girl.

It was her stepdaughter, Amerie Jo.

He thus he found out that Amerie had disappeared.

Amerie's biological father, Alfred Garza, was also out of school as the massacre unfolded.

Days later, as gun enthusiasts and politicians gathered at the NRA convention and the governor questioned law enforcement, the grieving father had a question.

"Who is going to pay for this?" Alfred Garza said.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, Nicole Chavez, Eric Levenson, Virginia Langmaid, Shimon Prokupecz, Nora Neus, Isabelle Chapman, Daniel A. Medina, Tina Burnside, Carroll Alvarado, Adrienne Broaddus, Bill Kirkos, Joe Sutton, Travis Caldwell, Michelle Krupa, Elizabeth Wolfe, Jamiel Lynch, Whitney Wild, Andy Rose, Amanda Musa, Alexa Miranda, Monica Serrano, Amanda Jackson, Holly Yan, Jason Carroll, Linh Tran, Isabelle Chapman, Jeff Winter, Casey Tolan, and Ed Lavandera contributed to this report.

It was reported and written by Ray Sánchez in New York.

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2022-05-30

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