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The report on the Uvalde massacre detects "systemic failures" and "huge errors in decision-making"

2022-07-18T01:46:12.521Z


The Texas House of Representatives issues a document on the events that occurred at the Robb school, where a young man murdered 19 children and two teachers


The Texas House of Representatives published this Sunday a report on the events that occurred at the Robb de Uvalde school on May 24.

That morning, an 18-year-old man entered the center where he had studied with an AR-15 rifle and murdered 19 children and two teachers.

It was the second worst school shooting in US history.

This document arrives almost two months after the tragedy to try to resolve the doubts that persist around the massacre.

One of the authors' conclusions is that everything failed that day.

From the school gates to the response of the 376 agents who responded to the emergency call.

"Systemic failures and a huge failure in decision-making," indicates the document prepared by a special investigation commission.

The school

The tragedy began with three open doors.

The 91-page report spends a good part talking about the chain of errors that led Salvador Ramos, who is never mentioned by name in the report out of respect for the victims, to enter the school without resistance.

The killer entered through the west campus gate.

“If school personnel had secured the doors, as required by protocol, this would have slowed progress for a few valuable minutes in which the children could have been alerted, hidden and given more opportunity for police to confront and apprehend the attacker. ”, states the document.

Once inside, Ramos walked down the main hallway and turned left into room 111, fourth grade.

It connected from the inside to Room 112. The door also had no lock, a breach of protocols established in schools after the 1999 Columbine shooting. The report reveals that many were aware that the lock on Room 111 was flawed.

The principal, his assistant, the classroom teacher, other teachers in that grade, and the students knew about the problem, but none had filled out a maintenance form to have it fixed.

The researchers also conclude that there was a relaxed atmosphere of the school staff.

Between February and May of this year, the authorities had issued 47 alerts at the school due to the police chasing coyotes or human traffickers, who drive vehicles full of immigrants at high speed along a highway that is near the school.

Some teachers thought that morning's alarm, set in an app called Raptor, was due to one of these incidents, common near the border, and not an active shooter.

Ramos' first few minutes inside Robb Elementary were the deadliest.

According to the investigation, of the 142 shots he fired inside the building, about 100 were fired in quick bursts in two and a half minutes, before the first policeman set foot inside the school.

That round of fire caused the most casualties that day.

One of the bullets went through the wall and injured teacher Ávila, in classroom 109.

A memorial for the victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas. KAYLEE GREENLEE BEAL (REUTERS)

The police response

Much has been said about the response of the authorities present.

The document highlights the mistakes of hundreds of agents.

"The officers who responded to the emergency call failed to follow their training to respond to the threat of a shooter and failed to prioritize their safety over the lives of innocent victims," ​​the text states.

The authors describe as "unacceptable" the 77 minutes it took for the police to enter classroom 111 and shoot Ramos down.

"We do not know, at the moment, if more lives could have been saved if the waiting time had been reduced," the authors add.

Although the document indicates that there are no more "villains" in this story other than the attacker, the chain of errors that falls on the agents who responded to the emergency is numerous.

Mainly, about Pete Arredondo, the police chief of the Uvalde School Department, in charge of monitoring nine schools with only six uniformed men.

Arredondo was one of the first to arrive at school that Tuesday morning.

Minutes before 11:30 the first 911 call was made. Ramos lost control of the van he stole from his school to go to school.

The vehicle fell into a ditch.

Two funeral home employees approached to see what had happened and the young man, who had shot his grandmother in the head shortly before, fired back at them.

They called the police for help as Ramos walked to Robb Elementary with a rifle and a backpack loaded with thousands of ammunition.

By 11:36 a.m., two groups of police were already on the scene.

South of the building was Arredondo along with three other School District agents.

Donald Page and Adrián Gonzalez, who were accompanying the police chief, were the first to enter.

To the north were three other officers.

All seven heard the burst from Ramos, who fired 16 more times in five minutes.

A total of 23 agencies responded to the call.

The Border Patrol mobilized 149 agents and the Texas Department of Public Safety 91. In total there were 376 members of different corporations.

Still from a video from a police officer's uniform camera inside the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. City of Uvalde Police Department (via REUTERS)

Inside the building, the police found a cloud of dust caused by the shots, which had left holes in the plaster walls.

Gonzalez described it as if someone had used the fire extinguisher.

There were also burnt shell casings on the ground and it smelled like gunpowder.

“None of these first responders remember hearing screams or understanding, as they arrived, that teachers and students had been killed inside the classrooms,” the text indicates.

Lieutenant Javier Martínez was the first to approach the lobby of classrooms 111 and 112. Ramos shot him and construction material from the walls forced the policeman to retreat.

Other fragments and shrapnel also hit Sergeant Eduardo Canales.

He east backed up and exited the west side without firing.

It was in those moments that Arredondo made a decision that has been considered by the commission "a terrible and tragic mistake."

The police chief went from facing the situation of an active shooter to that of an entrenched shooter.

He explained it this way: “We had him cornered... With police from the north side and another group to the south.

And we knew there were other children in other classrooms.

My thought was that we were a barrier and that we should get the children out.”

In his statements before the commission, Arredondo justified himself because no one there heard screams nor was it possible for them to see the shooter, who was hidden behind the door of room 111. “You must have a target before firing your pistol.

It's something that has crossed my mind a million times," Arredondo told investigators on June 21.

When they asked him what he would have done knowing that there were injured victims inside him.

He replied: "We probably would have rushed in saying 'there's someone there!'"

The report has caused a lot of anger among the relatives, who had been hearing for weeks the chain of errors and lawsuits by the police.

"This is a joke.

They are a joke.

They shouldn't have any plates.

None of them ”, Vincent Salazar, grandfather of Layla Salazar, an 11-year-old victim of the massacre, said this Sunday.


Police and other first responders gather outside Robb Elementary School after a shooting May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas.

Dario Lopez-Mills (AP)


The murderer

The report also takes an extensive portrait of the attacker and his origins in an effort to explain what drives someone to commit such a heinous crime.

The report details his difficulties fitting in with Uvalde and in society due to his stutter and delves into the dark turn his life took in the pandemic, especially in 2021, when he began to become obsessed with the idea of ​​"doing something big" that would give him notoriety.

He claimed not to be human and called others "humans" using the word as an insult.

Internet searches for him revealed that he researched what a sociopath is and what makes up this disorder.

This led to an offer for psychological treatment being sent to his email inbox.

Salvador Ramos, the second son of a couple, was born on May 16, 2004 in Fargo, North Dakota.

When his parents separated, his mother took his sister and him to Uvalde.

His father hardly saw him, he was an absent figure.

The last time they were together was a month before the shooting.

“The father feels that his son has no love for him,” the document says.

The father noticed cuts on Ramos' face that he had made to himself.

A former girlfriend of Ramos told the FBI that she believes Ramos was sexually abused as a child by his mother's partner.

Almost everyone described him as a "quiet and shy" guy who didn't interact because of speech problems.

His sister had graduated and left home.

His only friend had moved to San Antonio.

A fourth grade teacher, present at the school on the day of the attack, and some relatives of the murderer have described that he had been a victim of

bullying

for his way of speaking, his haircut and his clothing, which he repeated day after day. day.

After more than 100 absences in his last school year, the ninth grade, he dropped out.

Ramos also did not have a good relationship with his mother, who had had drug problems and had worked as a waitress in some local restaurants.

The report claims that Ramos rushed her plans after a big fight she had with her mom earlier in the year that was broadcast live on Instagram for her family to see.

After the fight, Ramos went to live with his grandmother, a beloved figure in the community who had worked in the school district for 27 years.

In her house he slept on the living room floor, since there was no room for him.

Living penniless, he was able to save money by working at hamburger joints or with his grandfather, who runs an air-conditioning business.

In February 2022 he bought 60 cartridges with a capacity of 30 bullets, a high-tech rifle sight and a mechanism to enhance the trigger shots.

When he turned 18 he was finally able to buy rifles and ammunition.

A day before the attack, 1,700 socket-headed shells, designed to do more damage, arrived at his house.

At a local gun store, where he was taken by his uncle, he bought a Daniel Defense brand AR-15 rifle.

Another day he bought one from Smith & Wesson.

Survivors, families and supporters of the Uvalde and Highland Park mass shootings gather on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, calling for stricter gun controls on July 13, 2022.OLIVER CONTRERAS (AFP)

The vendors of the armory told the FBI that the young man, dressed in black from head to toe, gave them "bad vibes."

“It was weird and he looked like one of those school shooters,” said another.

Despite this, no one denied him the service.

They did a background search and reported the purchase to the federal firearms agency, ATF.

The guns increased the pressure at home.

His grandmother forbade Ramos to have them under her roof, so they remained under the protection of his uncle.

He believes that Salvador took them one night when he slept at his house.

“The attacker had no experience with firearms, and interviews conducted by investigators with family and friends indicate that the shooting was the first time he had fired a weapon,” the investigation states.

The attacker, who had no criminal record and was not motivated by any political ideology, began sharing photos of his rifles to strangers on social media.

On Yubo, a French platform that promises to make new friends, Ramos was jealous of the fame acquired by shooters and an animal abuser who was the subject of a Netflix documentary.

Late last year he posted a video of him walking around town with a dead cat in a plastic bag.

Within the community he earned the nickname "Yubo school shooter".

No one informed the authorities of the threats of violence and rape against him.

In his last days of life, the shooter saved news about the supremacist attack on a Buffalo supermarket on his computer.

He also asked the son of his cousin, a student at the Robb school, for details on the schedules and meal times at the school.

On Tuesday the 24th, the day of the attack, Ramos had his last fight with his grandmother.

This had threatened to cancel his data plan, which would close his window to the digital world and social networks.

The woman called the AT&T company to do it.

Ramos shot him in the head.

He later reported his plans to a German teenager he had met online.

"I just shot my grandmother in the head... Right now I'm going to shoot up a primary school."

28 seconds later, his friend replied, "Cool."

Ramos left home to forever change the lives of Uvalde and its 16,000 inhabitants.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-07-18

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