In the wake of any mass tragedy like the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas earlier this week, total transparency is key to understanding exactly what transpired and finding ways to make sure a similar situation doesn’t happen again. At least that’s the way one would hope and think bureaucracy works. But as we’ve discovered over the past several days, officials both in the city of Uvalde and the state of Texas more generally don’t seem to have put a premium on honesty—to the point where even Tucker Carlson has called lawmakers out.
Now, with the help of eyewitness testimony and videos filmed at the scene of Robb Elementary School, the truth about what went down between law enforcement and the 18-year-old gunman who killed 21 people, including 19 kids, the truth is slowly coming to light—and, as Mediaite reports, it’s not pretty.
Originally, the story we heard was that a gunman arrived at the school on Tuesday morning and, after crashing his truck, immediately engaged with an armed school resource officer and, as a result, dropped a black bag full of ammunition before making his way into the school. Well, it turns out that wasn’t true. In fact, we’ve now learned that the gunman was in the school for approximately one whole hour before police even entered. On Thursday evening, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer attempted to get to the truth of the matter while discussing the tragedy with Texas Department of Public Safety Lieutenant Chris Olivarez.
Blitzer didn’t mince words when he asked Olivarez whether he thought it was “a mistake” that on-the-scene officers decided to wait an hour for a backup tactical team before attempting to enter the school and stop the shooter. The officer gave a very long and convoluted answer that explained how many officers entered the school, and who did what, but didn’t account for any timing. So Blitzer pushed again:
Blitzer: Don’t current best practices, don’t they call for officers to disable a shooter as quickly as possible, regardless of how many officers are actually on site?
Olivarez: Correct. The active shooter situation, you want to stop the killing, you want to preserve life. But also, one thing that of course the American people need to understand is that officers are making entry into this building. They do not know where the gunman is. They are hearing gunshots. They are receiving gunshots.
At that point, if they proceeded any further not knowing where the suspect was at, they could’ve been shot, they could’ve been killed, and that gunman would have had an opportunity to kill other people inside that school.
Yes, you read that correctly: Police waited an hour while a gunman was in the school killing children because, had law enforcement entered, “they could’ve been shot.”
As Mediaite wrote: “One girl inside the room reportedly bled for an hour after she was shot. She died at a hospital. It is unknown if that hour might have saved her life.”
You can watch the full video here.
(Via Mediaite)