The commander at the scene of a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, was not informed of panicked 911 calls coming from students trapped inside the building as the massacre unfolded, a Texas state senator said Thursday.
Democrat state Sen. Roland Gutierrez told reporters that the school police chief, Pete Arredondo, was not aware that children inside the school called 911 during the May 24 shooting.
The Democratic senator called it a “system failure” that calls were going to the city police but were not communicated to Arredondo.
“I want to know specifically who was receiving the 911 calls,” Gutierrez said during a news conference, adding that no single person or entity was fully to blame for the massacre.
Questions and criticism have emerged in the wake of the shooting about the police response. A top Texas official last week admitted that police were too slow in their response, while Uvalde and state officials have provided conflicting accounts about what had happened.
The gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, spent roughly 80 minutes inside the school, and more than an hour passed from when the first officers followed him into the building and when he was killed by law enforcement.
Since the shooting, law enforcement, and state officials have struggled to present an accurate timeline and details of the event and how police responded, sometimes providing conflicting information or withdrawing some statements hours later. State police have said some accounts were preliminary and may change as more witnesses are interviewed.
Officials at Robb Elementary School, meanwhile, have said that students will not return in the wake of the mass shooting last week that left 21 dead.
Funerals for the 19 students and two teachers who died last week have already started, the superintendent said.
The school will also continue to provide counseling and support to “families and staff for the foreseeable future,” adding, “We know that our lives will never be the same, but we also know that we will join together to honor the lives we lost and build a stronger Uvalde for those who remain.”
“We are heartbroken over the loss of our teachers and students and hold each of their family members close to our hearts,” he wrote. “The outpouring of love and offers of help from the local community and across the nation has been extraordinary. We want to express our sincere gratitude for the remarkable support of the community, state, and nation.”
After President Joe Biden visited Uvalde over the past weekend, Texas state Gutierrez told media outlets that the president told him he would provide federal funding to raze the school and rebuild a new one.
A similar situation occurred in Connecticut a decade earlier after a mass shooting at Sandy Hook. Officials in the state moved to demolish the Sandy Hook building and replaced it with a new one.
