A video appears to capture dispatchers telling law enforcement officers who responded to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that they were receiving calls from children who were inside of the classroom the shooter had entered that morning.
“Child is advising he is in the room, full of victims,” the dispatcher can be heard saying in the video. “Full of victims at this moment.”
“Is anybody inside of the building?” the dispatcher asked.
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the steps taken by police as the gunman was left inside the classroom for 77 minutes while 19 officers waited in the hallway.
According to Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw, officers inside of the school and more who waited outside of the building did so on the orders of the commander who believed the shooting involved a barricaded suspect situation, not an active shooter situation, law enforcement officials said Friday.
“From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision,” McCraw said of the supervisor’s call not to confront the shooter. “It was the wrong decision. Period. There’s no excuse for that.”
McCraw said in a press conference that dispatchers had received calls for help from children inside the classroom. One child called 911 a number of times begging for them to “please send police now.” It appeared that information may not have been relayed to officers on the ground, he said.
McCraw vowed that he would find answers to why there was a delay in entering the room and confronting the shooter who was shot when he emerged from a closet in the classroom where he had shot the majority of his victims.
The video appears to match a readout of a 911 call that McCraw read out last week at the news conference.
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