The officers in Robb Elementary’s corridor wanted to enter Classes 111 and 112 – immediately. An officer’s daughter was inside. Another officer had received a phone call from his wife, a teacher, who told him he was bleeding to death. Two closed doors and a wall stood between them and an 18-year-old with an AR-15 who had opened fire on children and teachers inside the connected classrooms. A Halligan bar – an ax-like violent entry tool used by firefighters to pass through locked doors – was available. Ballistic shields arrived at the spot. So there was plenty of firepower, including at least two rifles. Some officers were itching to move. One such officer, a special agent in the Texas Department of Public Safety, arrived about 20 minutes after the shooting began. He immediately asked: Are there still children in the classrooms? “If there is, then they just have to go in,” said the agent. Another officer replied: “It is unknown at this time.” The agent replied: “You do not know if there are children in there?” He added, “If there are children there, we have to go there.” “Whoever is responsible will determine it,” came the reply. The inaction seemed excessive for the special agent. He noted that there were still children in other classrooms within the school who needed to be evacuated. “Well, there are children here,” he said. “Well, I’m taking the kids out.” The exchange took place early in the gruesome 77 minutes of May 24 that began when Salvador Ramos, who had just shot his grandmother in the face, walked through an unlocked Robb Elementary door without encountering any interference while holding an AR-15 that he had bought. eight days earlier. At the end of those 77 minutes, 19 students, including the daughter of one of the officers in the corridor, and two teachers were dead or dying. Others suffered serious bodily injuries. emotionally and psychologically it will last for a lifetime. It was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. But during most of those 77 minutes, despite urgent calls from officers and parents gathered outside, police remained outside rooms 111 and 112, located at both ends of a wide corridor with blue and green walls and boards. announcements with children’s artwork. Ramos fired at least four rounds of ammunition – including the initial round of ammunition, which probably killed many of its victims instantly. After the special agent’s comment, it was almost another hour before a Border Patrol tactical team broke into the classroom doors and killed the gunman. In the weeks since the Uvalde tragedy, questions have swirled around police actions and whether some lives could have been saved if police had dealt with the trapped gunman earlier. Authorities have shared conflicting information about who was responsible, who dealt with the shooter and when. A debate about whether locked classroom doors could be broken gave way to the discovery that they might never have been locked. Revelations circulated in the press: The New York Times described the officers’ doubts about the decision to wait. failures in communications and tactics. and the fact that officers avoided the clash even though they knew people were injured, and possibly dead, inside. The San Antonio Express-News reported that there was no evidence that officers tried the doors on rooms 111 and 112 – contrary to a key claim by Uvalde school police chief Pete Arredondo, who told the Texas Tribune that the police tried the doors, found them locked and had to wait for a master key to unlock them. On Monday night, the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE-TV revealed that the officers, in fact, had more than enough firepower, equipment and incentives to break the rules. Pete Arredondo, Uvalde School District Police Chief, on a dirt road on the outskirts of Uvalde on June 8. Offer: Evan L’Roy for The Texas Tribune Meanwhile, at least three investigations – by the Texas Legislature, the US Department of Justice and local Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee – are reviewing records and questioning witnesses to assess the response of law enforcement. The common understanding of the response to the tragedy has been tarnished by the refusal of state and local agencies to release public records, the efforts of local officials to ban journalists from holding public meetings, and the closed-door hearings of state lawmakers. The finger has already pushed the Texas Monthly to ask, “Will we ever know the truth about Uvalde?” For this article, the Tribune reviewed a timeline of events compiled by law enforcement, as well as surveillance plans and transfers of radio traffic and telephone calls from the day of the shooting. The details were confirmed by a senior official of the Public Security Department. Research is still in its infancy and understanding what happened could change as video recordings are synchronized and improved. But current records and footage show that a well-equipped group of local officers entered the school almost immediately that day and then withdrew when the perpetrator started firing through the classroom. Then they waited more than an hour to get involved again. “They had the tools,” said Terry Nichols, a former Seguin police chief and shooting expert. “Regularly, there are many different ways you can deal with it. “But you need someone in charge, ahead, to make and execute decisions, and that just did not happen.” Here are some key findings from these files and material:

No security equipment inside the school showed police trying to open the doors to classrooms 111 and 112, which were connected to an adjoining door. Arredondo told the Tribune that he tried to open one door and another team of officers tried to open another, but that the door was reinforced and impenetrable. These efforts were not recorded in the plans examined by the Tribune. Some law enforcement officials are skeptical that the doors have ever been locked.

Within minutes of law enforcement response, an officer said Halligan (a firefighter sometimes spelled hooligan) was on the scene. He was not admitted to the school until one hour after the first officers entered the building. Authorities did not use it and waited for keys.

Officers had access to four ballistic shields inside the school during the gunfight, according to a law enforcement report. The first arrived 58 minutes before the police invaded the classrooms. The last one arrived 30 minutes ago.

Several members of the Public Security Department — up to eight at one point — entered the building at various times while the shooter was in hiding. Many quickly left to take on other duties, including evacuating children, after seeing the number of officers already there. At least one of the officers expressed confusion and frustration as to why police officers did not disturb the order, but were told he had not been ordered to do so.

At least some officers on the scene seemed to believe that Arredondo was in charge inside the school, and sometimes Arredondo appeared to issue orders directing officers to evacuate students from other classrooms. This contradicts Arredondo’s claim that he did not believe he was handling the response of law enforcement. Arredondo’s lawyer, George E. Hyde, did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

What the camera saw

Most of the video from inside the school was recorded by a wide-angle camera mounted at the northwest entrance of the school building, the same one used by the gunman. The camera looks straight south from its north roof and offers a slight view of the 111 and 112 class entrances to the left. The Tribune also looked at radio transcripts and body camera footage. They show that the gunman arrived on campus at 11:28 a.m. He appears to have been planning to shoot for a while. In October, according to the law enforcement schedule, he retired from Uvalde High School. A month later, when he was still 17, he bought some weapon accessories online, including rifle slingshots and a military transport vest. He started buying his ammunition in April and bought his gun on his 18th birthday in May. On May 14, he posted an ominous message on Instagram: “10 more days.” On February 28, this chat thread contained a reference to him – it is not clear by whom – as a “school shooter”. At 11:33 a.m. on May 24, he entered the northwest entrance of Robb Elementary and headed south toward the two classrooms on the left, firing randomly from his rifle into the hallway. He had crashed his car and shot outside, so the school was already locked at that point and the corridors were almost empty. No one was hit, but a boy appeared to be peeking into the corner at the northeast end of the hallway, apparently trying to get back to class from a nearby bathroom. The boy heard the shots and fled. (DPS confirmed he escaped unharmed.) The truck driven by the gunman remained …