The law enforcement response to the horrific school shooting at an Uvalde elementary school has been facing severe criticism after it was revealed that the shooter was alive inside the building for an hour without being taken out by police.
During this time, one brave mother drove 40 minutes from work, was handcuffed for trying to enter, talked police into freeing her, breached the perimeter, and went in and got her children out of the building.
Police officers also reportedly entered the building and rescued their own children during this time.
When questioned about the response by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez said that police were reluctant to engage the killer because they “could have been shot.”
Instead, they attempted to keep him in one room. Inside that room, a little girl was bleeding out and would later die at the hospital.
“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?” Blitzer asked Olivarez.
“They could’ve been shot. They could’ve been killed,” Texas police lieutenant explains why law enforcement did not go into Uvalde school right away. pic.twitter.com/lfzTtAQqFg
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The official explained that though the police were in the building quickly, they heard gunfire and decided to wait for a tactical team to arrive while isolating the killer to that class — almost like those children were sacrificial lambs.
“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 — that officers are making entry into this building. They do not know where the gunman is. They are hearing gunshots. They are receiving gunshots,” the DPS official said.
“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,” Olivarez continued.
