The unidentified city officer, who was carrying an AR-15 assault rifle, apparently stopped because he was afraid of hitting children, a senior deputy sheriff told the New York Times. Another officer from a different unit – the Uvalde school district police force – arrived early but passed the gunman without seeing him in the school parking lot, officials said. Salvador Ramos, 18, killed 21 people, including 19 children, at Robb Elementary School in Texas on May 24. He is not believed to have left a manifesto or note explaining his actions. The police did not confront him for more than an hour, even when their struggling parents urged them to enter the school. Chief deputy Ricardo Rios said the opportunity to shoot Ramos passed “very quickly”, perhaps in a matter of seconds. Any attempt to remove the moving gunman would be difficult, he added. If a police officer opened fire and hit a passerby – especially a child – he could face a criminal investigation. “I understood, after talking to several officers who were there, that the gunman had assembled two officers from the town of Uvalde when they arrived, outside the building,” Rio said in a statement. Police, including the one with the rifle, hid behind a patrol car. Recounting a conversation, Deputy Chief of Staff Rios said: “I asked him, ‘Why did you not shoot? Why didn’t you bother? “And that’s when he told me about the background. “According to the officers, they did not react because children were playing in the background and they were afraid that the children would hit them. “I do not fight him or anything,” added Mr. Rios. “I understood”. Picture: Kids Holding Signs Opposite the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting in Houston Last Month The Uvalde police department, whose officer is said to have targeted the gunman, did not respond to a request for comment, the New York Times reported. Mr Rios said he had shared his information with a Texas special committee investigating the school massacre. A spokesman for the committee, Dustin Burroughs, defended the decision to interview witnesses in person and not disclose her findings so far. “One person’s truth may be different from another,” he said. A teacher who survived the school shootings said he would never forgive the police who took more than an hour to enter his classroom after the gunman first opened fire. Arnulfo Reyes, a third- and fourth-grade teacher teaching in Room 111, was shot in the lung and back by Ramos.
