AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Law enforcement authorities had enough officers on the scene of the Uvalde school massacre to have stopped the gunman three minutes after he entered the building, and they never checked a classroom door to see if it was locked, the Texas public safety chief testified Tuesday, pronouncing the police response an “abject failure.”
Police officers with rifles instead stood and waited in a hallway for over an hour before they finally stormed the classroom and killed the gunman, putting an end to the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
The classroom door, it turned out, could not be locked from the inside, yet there is no indication officers tried to open it while the gunman was holed up, Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in blistering testimony at a state Senate hearing. Instead, he said, police waited around for a key.
“I have great reasons to believe it was never secured,” McCraw said of the door. “How about trying the door and seeing if it’s locked?”
Delays in the law enforcement response have become the focus of federal, state and local investigations.