During an appearance on CNN this Thursday, a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) official said that officers who responded to the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, were hesitant to go in and engage the shooter because “they could’ve been shot.”
According to reports, the now-deceased shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was inside the school for about an hour before officers entered the classroom he was in and shot and killed him.
Speaking on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, DPS Lt. Chris Olivarez said officers entered the school quickly and heard gunfire when they arrived, prompting them to call for reinforcements. The officers in the building waited for a special tactical team to show up while corning Ramos into one classroom.
“Don’t current best practices, don’t they call for officers to disable a shooter as quickly as possible, regardless of how many officers are actually on site?” Blitzer asked.
“The active shooter situation, you want to stop the killing, you want to preserve life, but also one thing that – of course, the American people need to understand — that officers are making entry into this building. They do not know where the gunman is. They are hearing gunshots,” Olivarez replied.
“They are receiving gunshots,” he continued. “At that point, if they proceeded any further not knowing where the suspect was at, they could’ve been shot, they could’ve been killed, and that gunman would have had an opportunity to kill other people inside that school.”
Watch the clip at Mediaite.
