An open back door. A missed gunman …
An open back door. A missed gunman. A scramble for equipment. An elusive key. A baffling decision. A series of critical mistakes and unlucky breaks have drawn scrutiny in the week since the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, offering a grim reminder of the fine line that can separate a close call from an unspeakable tragedy.
“It can be as simple as maintenance of a door that is not locking properly, or propping the door,” Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, told Fox News Channel.
“It only takes one of those things to create this level of failure, and it’s why we have to be so critically focused every day, in every school in this country, in making sure that every detail is being tended to,” he said. The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District had implemented extensive security measures, including threat assessment teams, security staff, partnerships with local law enforcement, perimeter fencing, and a locked classroom-door policy. None of that stopped the 18-year-old gunman from shooting and killing 19 children and two teachers in a fourth-grade classroom at Robb Elementary School, where nearly everything that could go wrong on May 24 did go wrong. At 11:27 a.m., an unidentified teacher propped open the backdoor with a rock. A minute later, the gunman crashed his grandmother’s truck into an adjacent drainage ditch, then headed on foot to the school carrying a rifle and backpack of ammunition. He shot toward two employees outside the funeral home across the street, but missed them. He climbed the perimeter fence. He fired at the school building. The teacher ran back inside to retrieve a cell phone, apparently to call 911, and reemerged from the back door, but did not shut it, according to Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw. That was the first mistake. Then came the bad luck: The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District [CISD] has six school resource officers for nine schools, but none was at Robb at the time. At 11:31 a.m, however, one officer came speeding over in his car — and drove right past the gunman, who was crouched behind a vehicle. The officer approached the teacher instead, Mr. McCraw said. At 11:33 a.m., the shooter slipped into the school through the still-ajar backdoor. He then made his way to rooms 111 and 112, a pair of joined classrooms nearest the door, which he was able to enter. Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, said the Uvalde gunman “got in the exact same way the Santa Fe shooter did,” referring to the deadly 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas.
“He walked through an unlocked back door into an open classroom,” Mr. Cruz said Friday at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston. “We need serious funding to upgrade our schools to install bulletproof doors and locking classroom doors. And to hire law enforcement to protect our most precious asset — our children.”
Even if the door had not been propped open, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the gunman may have been able to get inside anyway.
