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[News/Updates] Mass Shooting at Robb Elementary Uvalde - 5/24/2022


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20 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

 


How about we lock them in a room with a psycho 18 yo with a couple of fully loaded ar15s for 90 minutes.

 

Silly rabbit, we only do that to children.  Cops don't face any consequences, for anything.  You know the rules around here.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/01/us/uvalde-shooting.html
 

Spoiler

UVALDE, Texas — In the final moments of her life, Eva Mireles, a teacher at Robb Elementary School, was on the phone with her husband, Ruben Ruiz, a school district police officer, the senior county official said on Wednesday.

They spoke for the last time from opposite sides of the school walls: She was with her fourth-grade students in a pair of adjoining classrooms taken over by a gunman; he was outside the school, amid the fast-growing throng of armed officers who rushed to the scene.

“She’s in the classroom and he’s outside. It’s terrifying,” the Uvalde County judge, Bill Mitchell, said on Wednesday after being briefed by sheriff’s deputies who were at the shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

The call was among several new details that have added to — and, in some cases, significantly altered — the shifting portrait of the shooting in Uvalde that has been offered by top officials, including Gov. Greg Abbott and the head of the state police, Steven McCraw.

The gunman’s grandmother, whom he shot in the face at home minutes before bursting into the school, had been employed at the elementary school in years past, a top teachers’ union official said. The two officers who first approached the classrooms and were struck by bullets that were fired through the locked door were senior members of the Uvalde Police Department, a lieutenant and a sergeant, officials said.

And a door to the school, through which the gunman, Salvador Ramos, entered, had been closed, but not locked as it should have been — a crucial amendment to the official narrative outlined to reporters, grieving Uvalde families and viewers of broadcasts carried live around the nation from the usually quiet ranching city about 80 miles west of San Antonio.

The latest detail about the teacher’s phone call to her husband is potentially an important one — suggesting that at least one of the officers arriving at the scene had information from inside the classrooms that could have informed the decision by the police to delay entry. A question remained as to whether 911 calls from children inside the classrooms, starting 30 minutes after the gunman arrived, were communicated to the commander at the scene.

Several times since last week, information presented by officials as fact in news conferences has later been changed or entirely retracted, further rattling an already stricken community and undermining the faith of many Texans in the official narrative of what happened, even among law enforcement officials and those who represent them.

The situation prompted Don McLaughlin, the mayor of Uvalde and a staunch conservative, to request a Justice Department investigation over the weekend, and led a statewide law enforcement union to issue a statement supporting that inquiry, in part, because “sources that Texans once saw as ironclad and completely reliable have now been proven false.”

The reference was to the governor and the head of the state police, according to a spokeswoman for the union, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas.

Mr. McCraw’s agency, the Texas Department of Public Safety, oversees both the state police and the Texas Rangers, and it had been leading the investigation into the shooting and the response by the police until the Justice Department stepped in with its own review.

On Wednesday, a spokesman for the state police, Travis Considine, referred questions to the local district attorney’s office and said that going forward the department would not be providing updates on the investigation. The district attorney, Christina M. Busbee, did not respond to requests for an interview.

State police officials have been forced to amend portions of their timeline of events several times, including last week when it became clear that a school district police officer had not confronted the gunman before he entered the school. They did so again on Tuesday, when the department said that the gunman did not enter through a door that was being propped open. Instead, the closed door had not been locked.

“After examining video evidence we were able to conclude that after propping the door open with a rock, the teacher ran back inside when she saw the shooter, and removed the rock and the door shut,” Mr. Considine said. “Investigators are now looking at why the door did not lock properly when it was shut.”

The Justice Department announced its investigation on Sunday and has said that the inquiry would result in its own report on what took place at Robb Elementary School.

The superintendent of Uvalde schools said on Wednesday that students and teachers would not be returning to the elementary school in the fall. And Mr. Abbott directed the state to begin a review of security at all Texas schools before the coming academic year.

Ms. Mireles, a teacher of 17 years and an avid hiker who took pride in teaching at a mostly Hispanic school, was shot and killed trying to protect her students, according to her aunt Lydia Martinez Delgado.

Her husband, Mr. Ruiz, who had rushed to the scene, was prevented by other police officers from going inside. “He could not go into the classroom where all the shooting victims were at,” Ms. Martinez Delgado said in an interview last week.

Officer Ruiz declined a request for an interview.

It was not clear when the two spoke or for how long during the 78 minutes that elapsed between the first calls that came in to 911 of a gunman at the school and the moment when a tactical team from the Border Patrol stormed into the room and killed him. Mr. Mitchell, the county judge, said deputy sheriffs who had been at the school recounted the call.

“I don’t know what was said,” Mr. Mitchell said, though the gist of it appeared to be, he said, that the gunman was already on the attack. “He’s outside hearing his wife: ‘I’m dying,’” he said, before cautioning that he did not know precisely what words were exchanged.

Mr. Mitchell said he did not know if the school district officer had told the chief of his six-member department, Pete Arredondo, about the call.

“He was talking to his wife. Whether that was conveyed to Arredondo or anyone else, I don’t know,” said the judge, who is the county’s executive and top official.

The state police have said it was Chief Arredondo’s decision to wait to send officers into the classrooms until specialized equipment and more highly trained officers could arrive, a decision that Mr. McCraw called “wrong” in a news conference on Friday.

A vast majority of the shooting inside the classrooms, which were joined in the middle, took place just after the gunman entered, at 11:33 a.m., Mr. McCraw said then. The gunman was killed at about 12:51 p.m.

While the motive of the gunman remained unclear, officials said that he, like so many in Uvalde, had a connection to the elementary school.

He lived with his grandmother Celia Martinez Gonzales, 66, in a modest home near the school. She used to be an “employee at the school,” said Zeph Capo, the president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers; a state law enforcement official confirmed her former employment at the school.

Ms. Martinez Gonzales was shot but not killed last week. Afterward Mr. Ramos fled her home and crashed her pickup truck, which neighbors said he could barely drive, into a ditch near the school. He emerged with a gun, an AR-15-style rifle, one of two that he had bought shortly after his 18th birthday earlier in the month.

In an instant the shooting redefined life in Uvalde, a place that used to be known, by those who knew it at all, for its trees, its honey and its surrounding hunting ranches.

“This is the single most devastating, disastrous event that ever has happened in Uvalde County,” Mr. Mitchell, the county judge, said. “But we will rise. We will survive.”

 

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I’d say this was the most important part: 
 
"They're cowards," Reyes said. "They sit there and did nothing for our community. They took a long time to go in… I will never forgive them."

I believe I said this several hundred posts earlier in this thread and GW Hayduke took great offense to it. Fuck him. And fuck the people that said “to serve and protect, but me first.”
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55 minutes ago, NAVY said:

Este 

 

 

This is the 100% unvarnished, unexaggerated truth.

I've heard firsthand facts of the crime scene and what this piece of shit did to these children to render them essentially unrecognizable.

Writing "LOL" on the walls in their blood.

America need to SEE the carnage. 

And even then, you are kidding yourself if you think any action will be taken. This whole discussion is just pissing into the wind.

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4 minutes ago, 4th and 5 said:

And even then, you are kidding yourself if you think any action will be taken. This whole discussion is just pissing into the wind.

Ultimately, this.

What I'm curious about is how MM is going to react when he gets stonewalled on all four of his proposed mechanisms.  When he sees how any and all measures are completely stymied, I wonder if he'll stick with his "I'm just a centrist" bit.

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Still don’t understand why Daniel Rodriguez, Uvalde PD Chief of Police, allowed Uvalde School Police Chief, Pete Arredondo, to control incident command for this. There was a major fuck up in waiting time but there’s no reason the school police dept Chief should be in control of a situation like this while Uvalde PD is also involved. 


CNN just said the "Police Chief" was on vacation. Idk if that was Rodriguez or Arredondo but might explain why Arredondo stayed in command...
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12 minutes ago, woohorn said:

CNN just said the "Police Chief" was on vacation. Idk if that was Rodriguez or Arredondo but might explain why Arredondo stayed in command...

 

The police chief on vacation was Uvalde PD Chief Daniel Rodriguez. Pete Arredondo is the Uvalde school district police chief who assumed command of the situation without a working radio. 

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Just now, MrBig said:

The police chief on vacation was Uvalde PD Chief Daniel Rodriguez. Pete Arredondo is the Uvalde school district police chief who assumed command of the situation without a working radio. 

To be fair, he wasn't going to use that radio to tell law enforcement to charge in and take the shooter out. 

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Lawmakers debating gun control in DC will today see video of a a fourth-grader who survived the Uvalde shooting by smearing the blood of one of her classmates on her body to appear like she was already shot and dead.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/amid-gun-control-pressure-lawmakers-hear-student-survived/story?id=85236966

Quote

Amid new pressure for gun control on Capitol Hill, lawmakers on Wednesday will hear what's expected to be dramatic testimony from a fourth grader trapped in a Texas classroom for more than an hour as a gunman killed 19 of her classmates and two of her teachers.

Miah Cerrillo, who emotionally described to CNN smearing herself with her classmate's blood and playing dead as the Uvalde rampage unfolded, is expected to describe the horror she experienced to the House Oversight Committee in a recorded video.

But Cerrillo will no longer be in the room when the video is played. Her father will appear in her place and will introduce her video statement.

"The Committee has been in close contact with Miah, her family, and her pediatrician and has been prioritizing her safety and comfort first and foremost. Her decision to record her story and share it with the American people is courageous – and I hope all Members open their hearts and minds to what she has to say," chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said in a statement. "Miah, her family, and her pediatrician have made the decision to have her not appear in person, and she will be represented by her father who will introduce her recorded testimony."

The committee also will hear from other families traumatized by the massacres in Uvalde and in Buffalo, New York, that killed a total of 31 people just 10 days apart.

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Also testifying are Felix Rubio and Kimberly Rubio, the parents of Lexi Rubio, a 10-year-old girl killed in Uvalde; Zeneta Everhart, the mother of Buffalo shooting survivor Zaire Goodman, who was shot in the neck while working at the store; and Roy Guerrero, a Uvalde pediatrician who treated the victims.

Felix and Kimberly Rubio, who lost their daughter Alexandria "Lexi" Rubio in the Texas School shooting, did an interview with Maria Elena Salinas.

ABC News

Guerrero told ABC News' Mireya Villarreal and James Scholz on the eve of his testimony that the community is "strong" but they need more than "thoughts and prayers."

"We need people to step up," he said. "We need this to stop, basically. And I figured that if I didn't take that step forward and take that initiative, I'd just kind of be sitting back doing nothing and not reaching my full potential with my obligation to these children. "

A second panel appearing before the House committee Wednesday includes various officials and advocacy group leaders: Buffalo police commissioner Joseph Gramaglia; Greg Jackson, Jr., the executive director of the Community Justice Action Fund; Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association; and Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety.

Students escape through a window during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas.

Pete Luna/Uvalde Leader-News

ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott spoke exclusively with Maloney on the eve of the committee's hearing on the gun violence epidemic.

"It will break your heart to hear their stories and to know that it's senseless and that it could be prevented," Maloney, D-N.Y., told Scott Tuesday evening in a preview of what to expect today when survivors and families testify.

Maloney said the survivors and families reached out to her committee and insisted on traveling to the nation's capital to share their experiences just mere weeks after witnessing horror -- hoping to change the hearts and minds of lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

"They wanted to tell their stories. They're hoping that their stories will change the minds of some of the members of Congress so that we can find solutions," Maloney said.

"We were saying maybe it would be too difficult," she said, referring to Miah Cerrillo, of someone so young wanting to testify before Congress. "But she felt strongly and her parents supported her wish that she be able to testify and tell her story."

MORE: Why gun control efforts in Congress have mostly failed for 30 years: TIMELINE

"She felt very, very strongly that her story -- she didn't want the loss of her teachers, the loss of her friends, but also the quick thinking that she had to play dead to smear blood all over herself to save her life. It's an incredible story," Maloney added.

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The hearing comes as negotiations continue on gun control. A bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, are trying to reach a compromise this week on incremental measures like expanded background checks, incentives for states to implement red flag laws and funding for mental health programs.

Senate Democrats are looking for at least 10 Republican votes to get to the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster. If they don't reach that mark, they risk continuing a 30-year trend of inaction on gun reform even in the wake of such tragedies as Sandy Hook, Las Vegas and Parkland.

Murphy provided an update on the talks during an appearance on "The View" on Tuesday, stating he's never seen this much public pressure for elected officials to act and he's hopeful Republicans are "picking up this sense of urgency."

MORE: Sen. Chris Murphy gives Biden update on Senate gun reform talks

"While we are very different in our views, we do both agree that we are not willing to do anything that compromises people's Second Amendment rights," Murphy said. "We are focusing on keeping weapons out of the hands of dangerous people."

President Joe Biden made an impassioned plea last week for more, including a ban on assault weapons like the AR-15 used in the Uvalde shooting, but most Republicans in Congress remain opposed to any gun restrictions.

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"We spent hours with hundreds of family members who were broken, whose lives will never be the same," Biden said in an address from the White House. "They had one message for all of us. Do something."

Maloney said she feels there is a new air of urgency to get gun control legislation on Biden's desk in light of the Uvalde mass shooting, and she's hopeful Republicans will change their minds when they hear the witnesses speak firsthand.

"Absolutely, there's a sense of urgency, and tomorrow we will be debating gun safety laws on the floor and voting. So, hopefully, their testimony will have an impact on the votes of these members of Congress," Maloney said Tuesday.

In a letter to Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the House will vote Wednesday afternoon on the Protect Our Kids Act, the gun control package assembled after the mass shootings in New York and Texas.

In all, 19 young children and two teachers were killed by a gunman wielding an AR-15-style assault weapon at Robb Elementary School on May 24. Funerals for the victims are continuing until June 25.

In Buffalo, 10 Black people were fatally shot in a Tops grocery store on May 14. The Department of Justice is investigating the shooting as a "hate crime and an act of racially-motivated violent extremism."

Buffalo Police secure the scene of a mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, N.Y., May 14, 2022.

John Normile/Getty Images

MORE: Son of Buffalo shooting victim to senators in hearing on domestic terrorism: 'What are you doing?'

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard from the son of one of the Buffalo victims as part of a hearing on domestic terrorism.

Garnell Whitfield Jr., the oldest son of Ruth Whitfield, and 86-year-old woman killed in the shooting, held back tears as he urged lawmakers to take action or "yield their positions" in Congress.

"You expect us to continue to just forgive and forget over and over again. And what are you doing?" he said. "You're elected to protect us, to protect our way of life."

 

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1 minute ago, C-Man said:

Lawmakers debating gun control in DC will today see video of a a fourth-grader who survived the Uvalde shooting by smearing the blood of one of her classmates on her body to appear like she was already shot and dead.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/amid-gun-control-pressure-lawmakers-hear-student-survived/story?id=85236966

 

Good. That footage, and all the footage of those childrens mangled and gory corpses, should be front an center in this discussion. That's the fucking table stakes.

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16 hours ago, Deej said:

Pete Arredondo is the Uvalde school district police chief who assumed command of the situation without a working radio. 

Has he surfaced? He was caught by reporters going to work the next day like nothing happened and hasn't been seen since. He skipped the special City Council meeting which would have been his first after being secretly sworn in. 

 

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https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Uvalde-Texas-school-shooting-Salvador-Ramos-forum-17226232.php

Quote

 

“Individuals in online forums that routinely promulgate domestic violent extremist and conspiracy theory-related content have praised the May 2022 mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas and encouraged copycat attacks,” DHS officials wrote in a bulletin released Tuesday morning. 

DHS officials explained that others have capitalized on the shooting—during which a lone gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers—to push conspiracy theories, including the false claim that the federal government faked the shooting to boost support for gun control measures. 

 

Fucking pathetic.

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https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Uvalde-Texas-school-shooting-Salvador-Ramos-forum-17226232.php
 
“Individuals in online forums that routinely promulgate domestic violent extremist and conspiracy theory-related content have praised the May 2022 mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas and encouraged copycat attacks,” DHS officials wrote in a bulletin released Tuesday morning. 
DHS officials explained that others have capitalized on the shooting—during which a lone gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers—to push conspiracy theories, including the false claim that the federal government faked the shooting to boost support for gun control measures. 
 
Fucking pathetic.
What is pathetic is that I read that, and was wholly unsurprised or angered. My reaction was, "of course."
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58 minutes ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy

Lol that's literally how I describe surly to my wife - and while I thankfully haven't seen anyone on Surly posting about how it's a good thing that those kids died, I have definitely seen conspiracy rhetoric about how this group or that group is pushing porn/videogames/gabbagool/etc to incite these sorts of attacks to build a case to take away guns. The fear rhetoric used in response to the school shooting has certainly been more centered around "MUH GUNZZZ" than "holy shit 19 children were just pulped with an AR"

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They want to play army, they want people to believe they need military capabilities and the people should pay for them. Then when it comes time to do army things, everyone volunteers for crowd control. 
 

imagine military officers planning something and every time something might be dangerous to the soldiers, they scrap it. 

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All we need is good guys with guns who are too afraid to go confront the lone bad guy with a gun. Wouldn't shock me if some of those cowardly officers start eating their guns. 

Edited by mdmost
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