The Texas elementary school where a gunman 19 children and two teachers will be demolished, officials in Uvalde said.
During a city council meeting on Tuesday, Mayor Don McLaughlin was asked by an attendee whether Robb Elementary School would be torn down.
‘My understanding — I had a discussion with the superintendent — that school will be demolished,’ McLaughlin said. ‘We could never ask a child to go back, or a teacher to go back into that school ever.’
The mayor did not share when the demolition process would begin.
His comments come as public anger toward police officials has hit a high, following their delayed response to the incident on May 24. Earlier Tuesday, during a Texas Senate hearing, the state’s top police official called the police response an ‘abject failure.’
‘The officers had weapons; the children had none,’ said Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw. ‘The officers had body armor, the children had none. The officers had training, the subject had none. One hour, 14 minutes and eight seconds – That is how long the children waited, and the teachers waited, in Room 111 to be rescued’
There were enough armed police officers on the scene of the shooting at Robb Elementary School to have stopped the gunman three minutes after he entered the building, McCraw said during the hearing.
Instead, police waited in a hallway for 77 minutes for additional manpower and tactical gear to arrive before finally storming the classroom and killing the gunman. By then, he had already 19 children and their two teachers.
Surveillance video also revealed that none of the police officers had tried to enter the classrooms where the gunman was barricaded inside. Earlier reports had indicated police were unable to enter because the door had been locked, which was not the case.
No officers made an effort to enter the room, and the door’s lock was broken.
McCraw, as well as much of the Uvalde community, have placed the blame on the school district’s police chief, Peter Arredondo, who was supposed to be the commanding officer at the scene, but has said he had no idea he was in charge.
Uvalde’s mayor hit back against McCraw’s claims, saying he continued to ‘lie, leak, mislead, or misstate information’ about local police in order to protect state troopers.
‘There were no less than eight law enforcement agencies present in the hallway leading up to the breach of the door at Robb Elementary School. Every briefing, he leaves out the number of his own officers and rangers that were on the scene that day,’ McLaughlin said.
‘He leaves out that during this time, every other classroom in the building was safely evacuated by Uvalde peace officers with the assistance of Border Patrol.’
His comments came hours after Uvalde City Council voted against allowing Arredondo to have a leave of absence as criticism against his response to the shooting mounts.
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