Uvalde continues to cry: Why did the Police take 77 minutes to enter the school?

One year after the most terrifying day of her life, teacher Betty Rubio still doesn’t know why she had to spend more than an hour locked in her classroom, crouching with her “children”, waiting for them to be rescued. On the anniversary of the tragedy of the Robb Elementary Schoolwhich killed 19 children and two teachers, uvalde Still no answers.

The almost 400 troops who participated in the rescue operation needed one hour and 17 minutes until they entered the school and killed Salvador Ramosan 18-year-old who barricaded himself with his AR-15 assault rifle, a weapon of war that he bought on his birthday.

LOOK HERE: The parents who left Uvalde because they could not bear the pain of the death of their 10-year-old daughter in a shooting

Minutes that became eternal for Rubio, who managed to lock himself in his class with his “children”, as he calls his students. “I don’t know what their protocol is for something like that, I just know that we waited in class, we were the last to leave because the Police were knocking on the door, but there was a lot of confusion.”, he recalls to EFE through tears.

Minutes that they remained sitting on the ground, “waiting, trying to reassure the children”. “I didn’t tell them what was going on”, she explains, but she imagined what was happening, what has happened so many times in the country where multiple shootings are the daily bread.

There are several open investigations into what happened at the school, which has remained closed ever since, awaiting demolition. According to a report by a committee of the Texas House of Representatives was “systemic failures” in the police response, but no one has been prosecuted for it.

The district attorney to which the city belongs, Christina Mitchellis studying whether to file charges against the officers and there is also an open investigation of the Justice Department.

“We know that nothing we can do can undo the pain (…), but the Department of Justice is doing everything in its power to assess what happened that day and provide the answers that the community deserves.”, pointed out this Thursday at a press conference the US attorney general, merrick garland.

The boss of the school police from Uvalde, Pete Arredondowas fired in August, and various other charges were dropped, but no one is being prosecuted and this answer is not enough for the majority of the inhabitants of this city of 15,000 located 100 kilometers from the border with Mexico.

MORE INFORMATION: Shooting in Uvalde: survivors of the massacre demand 27,000 million dollars from the police

Neither is it for Arnulfo Reyes, one of the surviving teachers of the massacre, who was injured. “We are upset by how long it took. I understand that they are human, I understand that they were scared, but these little children had no weapons or anything to protect themselves and they should have protected them.”, he tells EFE.

That is why he has spent months, like many of the parents, protesting and demanding answers and changes. Among them, that she raise her age from 18 to 21 in order to have an assault weapon.

Dressed in orange, the color of protest against gun violence, this Wednesday he went with a group of citizens to protest in the square where the memorial in honor of the victims is located.

He has also gone to the square Roy Guerrero, the pediatrician who treated some of the children who were taken to the hospital that day. This year he has testified twice in the Capitol American, in the committee for the reform of the gun control, recounting bluntly what he saw.

“Those weapons are made to destroy a human body, imagine that of a ten-year-old boy with a bullet in the head or in the body… Children without heads, without chests. These weapons have no reason to be in our communities.”, complaint.

He also told the president, Joe Bidenwho sent a message of support to the families this Wednesday: “They will never leave your hearts. They will always be part of you”, he said in a message in which he insisted on the need for Congress to ban assault weapons.

ALSO SEE: New audio reveals the order of a policeman to wait in the middle of the shooting in Uvalde

For families today is being a hard day. The day began with a mass officiated by the Archbishop of Saint Anthony, Gustavo Garcia-Sillerwho in his homily had a clear claim: “Let the guns stop filling the streets”.

“Let us teach young people and children to choose the path of peace instead of violence”, affirmed the religious, who also wanted to advocate for a message of “unit” to overcome the trauma and called for an end to the division that the event has generated in the community and between the families themselves.

Tonight will take place at uvalde a vigil in honor of the victims in which the families are expected to participate.

Source: Elcomercio

jack

I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.