Authorities Outlined a Series of Missteps Police Made as Gunman Fired More Than 100 Rounds

In a tense and at times emotional news conference outside of Robb Elementary School, a top Texas state police official acknowledged that the decision by local police officers on the scene of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, not to breach the classroom for more than an hour as the rampage was taking place was “the wrong decision.”

“Obviously, based on the information we have, there were children in that classroom that were still at risk,” said Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. “From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision. Period.”

The gunman had arrived at the school at 11:28 a.m., McCraw said, and began firing rounds into school windows. At the same time, a school district police officer who was responding to reports of a gunman inadvertently “drove right by the suspect” in pursuit of someone else he thought was the gunman but was actually a teacher, officials said.

The gunman is believed to have entered the school through a door that had been left propped open by a teacher, according to McCraw. The gunman went on to fire more than 100 rounds.

Over the next 78 minutes, more than a half-dozen harrowing 911 calls were made, at least two of them from students, describing unfolding carnage inside classrooms and begging for the police to come.

As many as 19 police officers were in a hallway inside the school shortly after noon, but McCraw said they made “no effort” to breach the classroom door.

Describing the thought process of the officers who were at the scene, McCraw said the chief of the school district’s police force, who was the incident commander, was convinced that the gunman had barricaded himself in a classroom and that “there was no more threat to the children.” McCraw said officials thought they had time to obtain keys to the classroom and get organized.

“A decision was made,” he said, “that this was a barricaded-subject situation, that there was time to retrieve the keys and wait for a tactical team with the equipment to go ahead and breach the door and take on the subject at the point.”

At 12:16 p.m., one 911 caller said that eight or nine students were still alive in the classroom; it was unclear whether any of those students later died.

The police finally entered the classroom at 12:50 p.m., after having gotten a key from a janitor.

Asked what he would say to parents, McCraw’s response was a mix of defiance and resignation.

“What do I say to the parents?” he asked. “I don’t have anything to say to the parents, other than what happened. We are not here to defend what happened, we are here to report the facts.”