Police didn't try to open doors to classrooms with Uvalde shooter inside: Source [View all]

[pnwmom]

Source: ABC7ny

UVALDE, Texas -- In a new twist in the Uvalde elementary school mass shooting, a source has confirmed to ABC News that as police waited for more than an hour in a hallway outside the classrooms where a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers, none of the officers checked to see if the doors to the classrooms were locked.

The new development in the investigation of the shooting came just days after Chief Pete Arredondo of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police, the incident commander during the May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, defended his actions and claimed the delay in breaching connecting classrooms 111 and 112, where the gunman was holed up was because he was waiting for a janitor to get the key to the door.

But surveillance footage showed that neither Arredondo nor any other officers taking cover in the hallway outside the classrooms ever attempted to open the door before receiving the keys to the two connecting classrooms. That means there were 77 minutes between when the alleged 18-year-old gunman entered the school through an unlocked door and when police fatally shot him, a source with knowledge of the investigation told ABC News.


Read more: https://abc7ny.com/texas-school-shooting-uvalde-police-classroom-doors-shooter/11980828/

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Also, on June 6 there was a story reporting that another teacher in Rm 111 (one of the pair of adjoining rooms) had previously complained that the locks on the classroom door didn't work.

https://abc7.com/uvalde-teacher-police-response-arnulfo-reyes-texas-school-shooting/11935283/

Robb Elementary School prepared for active shooter events, conducting drills as recently as a few weeks before the mass shooting. But Reyes described failures in protocol at nearly every step of the security process on May 24 -- missteps in protocol and execution that he says cost lives.

"There was no announcement. I did not receive any messages on my phone -- sometimes we do get a Raptor system," he said, referring to the school district's emergency alert program, "but I didn't get anything, and I didn't hear anything."

Reyes also described complaints he said he had made about his door, which is meant to remain shut and locked while class is in session. At prior security checks, Reyes said he noticed that his door would not latch -- an issue he said he raised with the school's principal.

"When that would happen, I would tell my principal, 'Hey, I'm going to get in trouble again, they're going to come and tell you that I left my door unlocked, which I didn't,'" he said. "But the latch was stuck. So, it was just an easy fix."