Dramatic new images of the Uvalde, Texas school massacre show police pulling scared children out of building windows while a rabid gunman is still locked inside.
Photos show crying girls and boys throughout the sprint, which runs from Robb Elementary School on Tuesday, as officers point them to safety in a meadow.
Photos show local police and US Customs and Border Protection agents opening a window to help the children with the looks of terror on the children’s faces.
The new images are the latest to emerge outside the school as questions swirl about law enforcement’s response to the mass shooting that killed 19 children and two adults.
In a previous video, desperate parents were pleading with officers to storm the building, as police were seen standing back outside. Many parents agreed to move into the building themselves, the images showed.
More than a dozen cops were inside the building, while 18-year-old shooter Salvador Ramos was holed up in two interlocking classrooms and two frightened youths saw 911 begging for help several times, but cops back for more than 40. The minute instead of breaking the door stood, a top cop said on Friday.
Colonel Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, acknowledged that when police mistakenly changed the standoff approach from an open shooter position to a “barricaded suspect” position.
“With the benefit of where I’m sitting right now, it certainly wasn’t the right decision, it was the wrong decision,” McCraw told reporters at a news conference on Friday.
“There was no excuse for it.”
The call was made by School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo, McCraw said. Ramos had rammed a pickup truck into a ditch near the school just before 11:30 a.m. and entered the school through a door opened by a teacher.
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He locked himself in rooms 111 and 112 and fired more than 100 bullets. By 12:50 pm a tactical unit opened the door using the watchman’s key and fatally shot Ramos.
