The tragic and confusing saga of the Uvalde, TX shooting at Robb Elementary continues. It has been hard to keep up with the tragedies around the nation, and all the details surrounding them, including but not limited to the Uvalde shooting.
As we reported early on, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott was livid after feeling mislead about initial reports of what exactly went wrong with the shooting response by law enforcement. Read more about that:
Police Chief Pete Arredondo initially played defense, despite much blame being placed on him for a delayed response. Arredondo tried to continue his plan to join the local city council initially, but public outrage eventually got to him, and that plan was not able to be kept.
Arredondo was also placed on leave after a longer period of time than many were comfortable with.
It is now being reported by Texas Tribune that one officer wanted to try and stop the shooter, but was not able to get permission from higher-ups. The supervisor either did not hear the request or responded too late according to a report. Texas Tribune says the request was about a minute before the shooter entered the school.
The officer was reported to have been afraid of possibly shooting children while attempting to take out the gunman, according to the report released Wednesday by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, located at Texas State University in San Marcos.
The lack of response to the officer’s request to shoot the suspect outside the school was the most significant new detail that the report revealed.
“A reasonable officer would conclude in this case, based upon the totality of the circumstances, that use of deadly force was warranted,” according to the report. The report referred to the Texas Penal Code, which states an individual is justified in using deadly force when the individual reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary to prevent the commission of murder.
The report goes on to detail errors made by many that may have contributed to the mass confusion that lead to many more deaths than should have happened in the eyes of many. Read the full report here.
The request from the officer to try and take out the shooter early on had not been previously reported.
Also from the report:
“Ideally, the officers would have placed accurate return fire on the attacker when the attacker began shooting at them,” the report said. “Maintaining position or even pushing forward to a better spot to deliver accurate return fire would have undoubtedly been dangerous, and there would have been a high probability that some of the officers would have been shot or even killed. However, the officers also would likely have been able to stop the attacker and then focus on getting immediate medical care to the wounded.”
Read the Texas Tribune story on this here.
There is a lot of data to sort through from the report evaluating the law enforcement response and news outlets are sure to be combing through it for more angles. Hopefully schools and law enforcement around the nation can use this to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.
