Police Under Pressure Over US School Shooting
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
UVALDE (Worthy News) – Police in the U.S. State of Texas have come under pressure for allegedly declining to fast intervene in the nation’s deadliest school shooting in years.
Nineteen children and two adults died, and 17 others were injured when a teenager was in the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde for up to an hour before he was killed, authorities said.
The alleged gunman Salvador Ramos, 18, had earlier shot his grandmother before entering the school, an attack he had reportedly already trumpeted on social media before it took place.
Eyewitnesses told reporters that women shouted at police officers to “go in there,” but that police did not enter.
Javier Cazares, whose daughter was killed in the attack, said he suggested running in with other onlookers because the police “weren’t doing anything.”
Authorities countered that the gunman locked himself in a classroom which officers then struggled to gain access to.
Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told a news conference on Wednesday that the gunman was on site for between 40 minutes and an hour. Only after that long time law enforcement was able to “contain” him, McCraw said.
Tuesday’s attack has revived a debate on the many weapons available in the United States, though supporters of guns claim they have prevented many more potential massacres.
Tuesday’s assault at Robb Elementary School in the heavily Latino town of Uvalde was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. grade-school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.
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