Surveillance footage shows the 77 minutes between the gunman’s entrance and officers’ breach to kill the shooter.
QUICK FACTS:
- Investigators have asserted that the Uvalde, Texas elementary school shooter might not have locked to door to a connected classroom from the inside.
- Surveillance footage shows the 77 minutes between the time a gunman entered the rooms and killed 19 students and two teachers, and when police stormed the room.
- Law enforcement sources say that the footage shows police never tried to open a door to two of the classrooms connected to the room where the massacre took place.
- The investigation shows that the May 24th shooting may not have taken place in a completely locked classroom, because police assumed that the typically automatically locking door was secured.
- However, evidence of a malfunction in the door to an adjoining classroom indicates that the door might have been open the whole time.
LOCAL REPORTING:
- “All classroom doors at Robb Elementary are designed to lock automatically when they are closed so that the only way to enter from the outside is with a key, the source said. Police might have assumed the door was locked, but the latest evidence suggests it may have been open the whole time, possibly due to a malfunction, the source said,” according to The San Antonio Express-News.
- “The surveillance footage indicates gunman Salvador Ramos, 18, was able to open the door to classroom 111 and enter with an assault-style rifle,” the report went on to say.
- “Police finally opened the door to classroom 111 and killed Ramos at 12:50 p.m. Whether the door was unlocked all along remains under investigation. Regardless, officers had access the entire time to a ‘halligan’ — a crowbar-like tool that could have opened the door to the classrooms even if it was locked, the source said.”
BACKGROUND:
- Local police have changed their official presentation of the facts on multiple occasions regarding the shooting.
- Initially, the Department of Public Safety said that the exterior door where Ramos entered was propped open by a teacher, but that was later proven incorrect.
- It was also previously reported that school police had shot Ramos, before that fact was later corrected to say that no school police officer confronted Ramos outside the school.
- The FBI, Justice Department, and the Texas Rangers are all investigating the police response to the shooting.
