As a Texas Senate hearing is underway this week regarding the May 24 deadly Uvalde shooting at Robb Elementary School, new details continue to emerge. Today (June 21), NPR reported that a top Texas official believes the attack that left 21 people dead, including 19 children and two adults, could have been stopped in minutes.
During today’s hearing, Steve McCraw (director of the Texas Department of Public Safety) spoke about how the situation could have had a better outcome. “The officers had weapons, the children had none. The officers had body armor, the children had none. The officers had training, the subject had none,” he said. McCraw reportedly criticized school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was at the scene, for not properly responding to the active shooter incident.
According to TODAY, Arredondo did an interview with the Texas Tribune earlier this month in which he said he never considered himself the scene’s incident commander. Yesterday (June 20), community members held a school board meeting and called for his resignation. As today’s hearing went on, McCraw pointed out other factors that fueled the mass casualties.
The director shared that the only barrier between the gunman and the elementary school was a four-foot perimeter fence that the suspect reportedly hopped. McCraw’s assessment continued by adding that only the Border Patrol responders had working handheld radios to effectively communicate. The horrific mass shooting lasted for over an hour, but McCraw stated that it could have been stopped in three minutes.
As he spoke at the Capitol, McCraw highlighted the faculty and staff who bravely followed active shooter protocols. Yesterday, Texas Sen. Roland Gutierrez spoke to CNN about the situation, saying, “We should have law enforcement agencies tell us exactly what went wrong. And the fact that we’re not getting that information is just a travesty in and of itself.”