After the shooting, in which an eighteen-year-old killed nineteen children and two teachers on Tuesday, it was said: ‘it could have been much worse’. It soon became clear that it could have been much better. While gunshot after gun could be heard in class 111 and 112, officers were outside waiting for a key.
The massacre shocked the nation. For a moment, the discussion flared up again about how it was possible for an eighteen-year-old in the US to obtain rapid fire weapons, including thousands of cartridges. And quickly the anger was followed by frustration because the right to guns was enshrined in the Constitution.
At a police press conference on Friday, anger over gun ownership gave way to bewilderment. Steven McCraw, the Texas public safety chief, said the police had lingered. Officers wasted valuable time, a lot of time, because their supervisor instructed them to do so. “That was the wrong decision,” McCraw said, “it was simply wrong. Point.’
The superior who, due to circumstances, had been put in charge of the arriving policemen and border guards was ‘Pete’ Arredondo. He was the chief of the district’s school police department, a school police force that deals with peace and order, petty fights, and education about drug use. Also school shootings are part of the education, which is not surprising in a country where more than thirty murderous loners have targeted a school this year alone. Arredondo was deemed competent to also handle these school shooting to deal with.
That turned out to be a misconception, according to McCraw’s story: “It was the wrong decision, period.” This comment was perhaps more baffling than the fact that a teenager could have walked into the school with a gun. Now relatives are left with the pressing question: How could the drama have ended if the officers hadn’t hesitated? How many children could have survived?
Minute by minute reconstruction
According to McGraw, the officers had been waiting unnecessarily for at least 40 minutes. In the press conference he gave a reconstruction in which you could follow from minute to minute what happened at primary school:
11:28: The shooter rams into a car with his pickup truck, gets out and walks with his rifle, firing, across the parking lot towards the school building.
11:30: The emergency number 911 receives the first call, presumably from a teacher. He reports that someone has rammed into another with his car, and that there is a gunman on the property. The shooter shoots people in the parking lot and walks to the school.
11:31: The first police car drives onto the site. The officers drive past the shooter, and further down they pounce on a man whom they knock to the ground. That turns out to be a teacher. The shooter, meanwhile, continues to run unmolested.
11:33: The shooter enters the school, and walks through the hall to classes 111 and 112, which are connected by a room with toilets and washing facilities. The armed teenager fires more than a hundred rounds.
11:35: Three officers enter the hall, the gunman fires them and two of them get gnarly shots. The shooter closes the doors of the two classrooms.
11:37: Sixteen more shots are heard.
12:01: More, and senior police officers arrive at the school. At 12:03, nineteen officers are standing in the hall of the school.
12:03: A kid calls 911 and says she’s in class 112. The call lasts 1 minute and 23 seconds.
12:10: The same girl calls 911 again and says there are deaths.
12:13: The girl calls 911 again.
12:15: Members of the Border Guard arrive with bulletproof shields.
12:16: The girl calls 911 again and says that eight or nine children in her class are still alive.
12:19: Another child, this time from class 111, calls, but hangs up when a classmate tells her to be quiet.
12:21: Cops think the shooter is behind the door, and they retreat further down the hall. From the room comes a new 911 call, on which shots can be heard.
12:36: The first girl who has called several times calls again. The police tell her to be quiet, but not to disconnect. The girl says that the shooter shot at the door.
12:43 and 12:47: The girl on the line asks 911 to “please” send the police in.
12:46: She says she can hear the police on the other side of the door.
12:50: 1 hour and 20 minutes after the first call to 911, 1 hour and 15 minutes after the first officers entered the school, and 47 minutes after the first call from the classroom where the drama is unfolding, the police open the door with a key, and storms into the classroom.
The eighteen-year-old gunman, who was hiding in a closet, kicks open the closet door and opens fire. He is shot.
In the two classrooms lie the bodies of 19 children aged 9, 10 and 11, and two teachers. The girl who persistently called 911 is one of the survivors of the massacre.
‘Good night’
Some survivors were quoted in the media after the massacre. Their descriptions were brief and sporadic, but they gave a glimpse into the anguish they endured for nearly an hour and a half. A CNN producer spoke to 11-year-old Mariah Cerillo, who shared that the class was going to the Disney movie Lilo & Stitch was watching as the shooter entered.
According to the girl, he made eye contact with the teacher, said ‘good night’ and shot her dead, after which he started shooting at the children in the class. Then the shooter moved to the next class, where, according to Mariah, he turned on “sad music” before firing. Mariah Cerillo smeared herself with a dead friend’s blood to make it look like she was dead, and called 911. Mariah injured one leg, but survived.
Samuel Salinas (10) told how a bullet hit a chair in front of him. “I think he was aiming for me,” he said. Fragments of the bullet hit his leg. He too pretended to be dead, and survived.
When Steven McCraw gave his press conference, it was known that Pete Arredondo had told the rushing officers to wait. He thought the gunman had entrenched himself and was no longer a danger to the children. That wasn’t right. Arredondo has not spoken to anyone since the shooting.
More details may be released in the near future. Perhaps they will answer the question of how many victims could possibly have been saved if the police had intervened more quickly.