By Liz Calvary -
NBC News
Rubén Ruiz, a police officer in Uvalde, Texas, tried to save his wife, teacher Eva Mireles, when he learned that she had been shot in the shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24, but was arrested by his companions and their weapon seized outside the educational center, explained the Texan authorities.
"There is an officer whose wife had called him and told him that (he) had been shot and that he was dying," revealed the director of the state Department of Public Safety, Steven McCraw, at Tuesday's hearing in the Texas Senate on the police response to the massacre, according to images released by PBS News.
"What happened to him as he tried to move into the hallway (is that) he was stopped and his gun was taken from him and he was escorted out," he explained.
Eva Mireles was shot to death at the Uvalde school on May 24. NBC News
Mireles, a fourth-grade teacher, was one of two teachers killed in the shooting, which also killed 19 students.
Lydia Martínez Delgado told The New York Times that her niece died protecting her students.
Rubén Ruiz is a police officer for the Uvalde school district.
The couple's daughter, Adalynn Ruiz, wrote a heartbreaking letter on Facebook after the shooting: "Mom, you are a hero.
I keep telling myself this isn't real.
I just want to hear your voice.
" "
I want everything to come back. I want you to come back to me mom. I miss you more than words can explain," she added.
[The door of the classroom where the murderer was was not closed]
Mireles' cousin, Amber Ybarra, spoke to NBC News' TODAY show after the shooting, calling her "a hero."
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"No one entered that school yesterday knowing that something like this was possible," Ybarra shared, assuring that Mireles loved "what he did at school, and he put his heart into everything he did."
McCraw called the police response an "absolute failure" at Tuesday's hearing.
He stated that "one of the biggest problems" was "lack of leadership and misinformation."
In addition, he stressed that there were enough agents three minutes after the shooting began to have intervened, and criticized that the commander in charge of the operation, Pete Arredondo, put the lives of his agents above that of the children trapped in the school.
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A new image of the interior of the school taken 19 minutes after the killer began shooting appears to show officers more protected and armed than previously believed.
"Investigators really believe at this point, to my understanding, that that was certainly enough firepower to try and engage the gunman," the Austin American-Statesman reporter told NBC News on Tuesday.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin also confirmed Tuesday that the school will be demolished.
"You can't ask any child or teacher to ever go back to that school," he explained at a town hall meeting, as reported by NBC News.
