We are now learning that a Uvalde Police officer had sighted Salvador Ramos with his rifle to shoot him before he entered the school building, but didn’t.
According to the new report, the officer was waiting for permission to pull the trigger:
BREAKING: A rifle-armed Uvalde officer sighted in to shoot the Robb Elementary attacker before he entered the school but instead waited for supervisor permission — one of many new revelations in a report obtained today by national experts about the May 24 police response. 1/4
— Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) July 6, 2022
The report by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training cites 3 missed chances to slow the gunman before he entered the building. It says officers who tried to stop him in the classroom "lost momentum" after taking fire as more weapons, including tear gas arrived. 2/4
— Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) July 6, 2022
The report says officers could have tried to breach the classroom through sheetrock, windows, and other means. "While we do not have definitive information at this point, it is possible that some of the people who died during this event could have been saved." 3/4
— Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) July 6, 2022
The report also is striking in that while much criticism has been leveled at Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo, the experts appear to condemn the work of rank-and-file offers who converged on the campus.
— Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) July 6, 2022
I would say based on this report that it would be easy to condemn the officer for not going ahead and pulling the trigger and taking out Ramos before he could get in the building. However I’m a little conflicted.
Given the attacks on police officers that we’ve seen in the last few years from Democrat cities all around the country, I can understand why this officer might have felt the need to get permission before firing, to have this department behind him in what could end up being a difficult situation.
At the same time hindsight is 20/20 and taking the shot would have prevented the deaths of so many innocent children. It clearly would have been the right thing to do.
I don’t know exactly what was going through the officer’s mind so I can’t speak to his rationale. But it’s hard to swallow that a Uvalde officer could have prevented all of this carnage and didn’t.