There are steep allegations against the police in the Texas city of Uvalde. Last Tuesday, Salvador R.* († 18) marched into an elementary school there and shot people indiscriminately. 19 children and two teachers lost their lives in the killing spree.
Despite several emergency calls, 90 minutes passed before the police stormed the building and shot the gunman dead. There was talk of a misjudgment – a misjudgment that claimed countless lives. Could the officials have prevented worse by intervening more quickly?
The story of a mother who took the initiative before the police underlined how much the emergency services hesitated. While officers stood by, she climbed over the school fence to save her two children. That reports the «Wall Street Journal».
Police attacked concerned father with pepper spray
As soon as mother Angeli G.* heard about the killing spree, she got into her car and drove to the school. She was shocked to discover that none of the emergency services who had surrounded the building had entered the school. “They just stood around in front of the fence,” the mother told the newspaper. “They neither went in nor ran anywhere,” G. continued.
She wasn’t alone in her anger. During the rampage, more and more angry parents gathered in front of the school, begging the police to stop the gunman. Instead of storming the building, the emergency services took action against the parents. According to G., an officer even attacked a father with pepper spray to calm him down. Another was grabbed by police and thrown to the ground.
G. himself was not spared either: after she first politely and then emphatically asked the officers to do something, she was handcuffed. She would intervene in an ongoing investigation, it said.
Only thanks to a police officer she knew was she freed from the handcuffs. And then G. didn’t lose a second. As soon as she was free of the handcuffs, she fled the crowd, climbed over the fence and rushed into the school building to rescue her children.
Girl smeared herself with blood to avoid being killed
Even children are puzzled as to why action was not taken sooner. So also for Miah C.* (11). She was in a classroom when Salvador R.* shot wildly. “Why didn’t they come in, why didn’t they save us?” Miah later asked a CNN reporter.
In order not to fall victim to the gunman, the girl smeared herself with the blood of a classmate who had already been killed, so that she would be taken for dead. Then she called 911 using the cell phone of a teacher who had been killed. “Please come, please come,” she begged. A few minutes later, the officers finally arrived at the scene of the crime – by this time more than a dozen people had already fallen victim to the gunman.
How many children could have been saved if the police had acted more quickly is unclear. What is certain, however, is that the officials are already in need of an explanation for their hesitant actions. (dzc)
* Names known to editors
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