A top Texas law enforcement official told state lawmakers Tuesday there were enough armed police officers wearing body armor to stop the shooting at Robb Elementary School three minutes after it began. Instead, it took approximately an hour and 14 minutes from the time officers arrived at the school to the moment they breached the door and killed the gunman.
“The officers had weapons, the children had none. The officers had body armor, the children had none. The officers had training, the subject had none,” Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told a Senate committee.
The 18-year-old gunman who entered the school killed 19 children and 2 teachers. Since the May massacre, misinformation has marred the public’s perception and understanding of events that occurred.
Previous reports stated the first officers on the scene were not properly equipped to enter the locked classrooms where the gunman was. NPR reports that during Tuesday’s testimony, McCraw said the door to the classroom the shooter entered was not secured, in part because of a malfunctioning strike plate. The classroom doors could not be locked from the inside, he said.
McCraw added that law enforcement officers on scene searched for a master key to the classroom but never actually tried to open the door until officers ultimately confronted the shooter more than an hour after the attack began.
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He added that the outside door the shooter used to enter the school was unlocked, though the lock was working properly. McCraw also criticized the on-scene commander for waiting to confront the shooter rather than breaching the classroom where he was hiding as soon as possible, NPR reports.
Authorities have said school district police chief Pete Arredondo, who treated the shooting as a barricade situation rather than an active shooter, caused delays in the police response.
McCraw’s testimony appears to back up the findings of an investigative report by The Texas Tribune which revealed a well-equipped group of local officers entered the school almost immediately “and then pulled back once the shooter began firing from inside the classroom.”
The Tribune reviewed a timeline of events compiled by law enforcement, plus surveillance footage and transcripts of radio traffic and phone calls from the day of the shooting. The details were confirmed by a senior official at the Department of Public Safety, according to the Tribune.
Seguin police chief and active-shooter expert, Terry Nichols is quoted in the Tribue article as saying, “They had the tools. Tactically, there’s lots of different ways you could tackle this. … But it takes someone in charge, in front, making and executing decisions, and that simply did not happen.”
According to NPR, McCraw called the police response to the shooting an “abject failure” and said it was “antithetical” to the lessons learned about active shooter situations since the shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999.
