At the meeting, Mayor Don McLaughlin also said that Robb Elementary, where the May 24 massacre took place, will be razed.
“You could never ask a child to come back or a teacher to go back to that school. Never,” he said.
McLaughlin harshly criticized the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and its leader, Colonel Steven McCraw. The Texas Rangers, a DPS agency, are leading the investigation into the shooting, and McLaughlin told residents he was upset that he and other city officials had never been told how the investigation was going. He went on to say that he believes McCraw is making misleading statements to help distance the actions of state soldiers and Texas Rangers who responded to the shooting.
“Colonel McCraw has continued to do so, whether you mean … lying, filtering, misleading or misleading information in order to distance his own soldiers and Rangers from the response. Each briefing session leaves out the number of his own officers and the Rangers, who were on the scene that day, “McLaughlin said.
Earlier in the day, McCraw appeared before Texas lawmakers, criticizing law enforcement’s response to the massacre and harshly criticizing the decisions of Uvalde School District Police Chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo.
“There is compelling evidence that law enforcement’s response to the Robb Elementary attack was an abject and antithetical failure to everything we’ve learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre,” he said. McCraw to the Texas Senate Special Committee to protect all Texans. in Austin.
“Three minutes after the subject entered the West Building, there were a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the subject,” he continued. “The only thing that prevented the dedicated officers ‘corridor from entering rooms 111 and 112 was the commander on the scene, who decided to put the officers’ lives before the children’s lives.”
Arredondo, who has not spoken in public since the incident, testified in camera on Tuesday. The recent jury was not present at the meeting where the other members voted unanimously to deny him the leave of future sessions.
McLaughlin told residents in the meeting room that he was angry because he could not get answers from the community to their questions and said he was not loyal to anyone, noting that he could not run again. mayoralty.
“The gloves have been removed,” he said. “As we know (information about the investigation), we will share it. We will not go back any further. We kept quiet at the request (of other agencies) because we thought we were doing a formal investigation and we were doing the right thing.”
The mayor said he requested a video of the body camera from all the agencies that responded to the shooting and that he has not received any.
Questions remain about what happened between the first and last shots
On May 24, the man armed with an AR-15-style rifle entered two adjacent classrooms at 11:33 a.m. and killed 21 people before a clash with police. The gunman remained inside the classrooms, even when the children inside called 911 and called for help, until law enforcement finally entered the rooms and killed him in the halls. 12.50 pm, according to a timeline from the Department of Public Safety.
What happened in those 77 minutes is not clear, as Texas officials offered conflicting narratives of the response.
McCraw’s comments on Tuesday represent the first time an official has provided substantial information about the shooting in weeks. He said the waiting decisions contradicted the established protocol of active shooters: stop the suspect as soon as possible.
“Officers had guns, kids didn’t have guns. Officers had body armor, kids didn’t have guns,” McCraw said. “The post-Columbine doctrine is clear, convincing, and unambiguous: stop killing, stop death.”
The schedule of the citizen security department indicated that 11 officers arrived at the school, some with rifles, three minutes after the gunman entered the classrooms. The suspect then shot and wounded several officers who approached the classrooms, and retreated to a hallway outside the rooms. The group of agents then stayed in the hallway and did not approach the door for another 73 minutes.
“While they were waiting, the commander at the scene was waiting for a radio and rifles,” McCraw said, referring to Arredondo. “Then he waited for shields. Then he waited for SWAT. Finally, he waited for a key that was never needed.”
Arredondo had previously told the Texas Tribune that he was not considered the commander of the incident that day. However, at least one of the officers was observed at 11:50 a.m. expressing the belief that Arredondo was leading the law enforcement response within the school, telling the others, “The boss is responsible.” , according to the calendar of the public security department.
Despite criticism, McCraw expressed displeasure at calling Arredondo individually. “I don’t like to distinguish a person and change and say he’s the only one responsible, but at the end of the day, if you take command of the incident, you’re responsible,” McCraw said.
Officers did not attempt to break down the doors for more than an hour
Late Monday, reports from CNN, the Texas Tribune and the Austin American-Statesman visualized part of the DPS timeline and revealed further flaws in the police response. In the first days after the shooting, authorities said the suspect had barricaded himself behind closed doors. Arredondo, who has been identified by other officials as the commander of the incident at the scene, had previously told the Texas Tribune that officers had found the classroom doors locked and reinforced with a steel jamb. which hindered any possible response or rescue. Efforts were made to locate a key to open the door, he said.
However, McCraw said video evidence showed that no one ever put their hand on the door handle to check if it was locked. Also, Robb Elementary’s doors could not be locked from the inside, McCraw said, calling it “ridiculous” from a security perspective.
In addition, Arredondo initially said responding agents needed more firepower and equipment to break down the doors. For example, at 11:40 a.m., Arredondo called the UValde police department shortly after the gunman shot at officers and called for more help and a radio, according to a DPS transcript.
“Right now we don’t have enough firepower, everything is a gun and it has an AR-15,” Arredondo said, according to a transcript from the DPS.
However, two of the first officers to arrive at the scene had rifles, according to McCraw.
In the first few minutes of his response, an agent also said that a Halligan, a fire extinguisher used for force entry, was on the scene, according to the timeline. However, the tool was not introduced to the school until an hour after the agents arrived and was never used, according to the timeline.
A security image obtained by the American statesman from Austin shows at least three agents in the corridor, two of whom have rifles and one who appears to have a tactical shield, at 11:52 a.m., 19 minutes after the gunman enter the area. school.
In all, officers had access to four ballistic shields inside the school, a quarter of which arrived 30 minutes before officers stormed the classrooms, according to chronology.
CNN has contacted Arredondo’s attorney, George Hyde, and the Uvalde police department about the reports.
CNN’s Rosalina Nieves, Dakin Andone, Travis Caldwell and Dave Alsup contributed to this report.