Student desperately tried to save teacher while cops botched Texas school shooting response
One of the teachers killed in the Texas school massacre may have still been alive while a group of officers waited nearly an hour to take out the gunman, according to a newly revealed 911 call from a student who saw the wounded woman.
“There is a lot of bodies,” 10-year-old Khloie Torres told a 911 dispatcher while locked inside a classroom with the Robb Elementary School shooter, according to the New York Times.
“I don’t want to die, my teacher is dead, my teacher is dead, please send help, send help for my teacher, she is shot but still alive.”
The call was logged at 12:10 p.m., 37 minutes after the gunman arrived on campus — and 40 minutes before cops breached the classroom door and killed the shooter.
Khloie was one of two students who called 911 from inside the two adjoining classrooms where 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos was holed up. In total, 19 kids and two teachers died.
The report confirmed several details of the police response to the shooting last Tuesday, including that on-scene commander Pete Arredondo didn’t have a police radio when he arrived. It also cited sources that confirmed the tactical unit that took out Ramos disobeyed an order to not breach the classroom door.
Arredondo and local police are under scrutiny for how they handled the shooting, with questions over if lives could’ve been saved if they acted sooner. More than 140 law enforcement officers were eventually at the school but it was over an hour from when Ramos arrived until they finally went into the classroom to confront Ramos, the Times said.
“I don’t understand why somebody did not go in,” Jamie Torres, Khloie’s mom, told the newspaper. Although people would have likely still been shot “it would have been way less than 21,” she said.
Ramos crashed a pickup truck near the school at 11:28 a.m. He emerged with an AR-15 style assault rifle before he hopped a fence and walked into an unlocked door at the school.
The immediate response was quick — with a school employee using a security app to alert a lockdown and active shooter at 11:32 a.m., just two minutes after the first 911 call, the Times reported. Texts and emails were sent as a result and school employees got an emergency alarm on their phones, but the gunman was inside less than a minute later, the Times said.
In Room 112, where most of the carnage unfolded, kids were watching a movie when the alert came in and teacher Irma Garcia rushed to the door to lock it but had trouble finding the right key while gunfire from the semi-automatic rang out in the hall, Khloie told the Times. When Garcia got the right key, Ramos was already there.
“He grabbed the door, and he opened it,” Khloie said, according to the Times.
While the girl and others hid under a table, Ramos declared “you’ll die” as Garcia tried to protect her students as gunfire erupted. Garcia and fellow teacher Eva Mireles were among those killed, the report said.
The child then witnessed the gunman declare “good night” before shooting at the other students. One child who yelled out they were hit, attracted the attention of the sadistic Ramos who fired at the wounded kid again, this time fatally, the Times said.
As the gunman moved between the classes Khloie whispered to her classmates to see if they were OK and at least one person allegedly responded. Another kid needed help getting her teacher’s body off of her, Khloie told the newspaper.
“Just be quiet, so he doesn’t come back in here,” she said she told her classmate.
One classmate worried that the gunman would find them hiding under a table, the Times reported.
The report also confirmed that a “heavily armed” tactical unit that included Border Patrol Agent, ICE agents and a sheriff’s deputy, amassed in the hallway outside of the adjoining classrooms and ignored orders not to go in to take out Ramos.
The unit was not a formal group, but made up of several officers who allegedly took it upon themselves to go in as the standoff dragged out and the chain of command appeared to be in chaos.
The police response to the shooting is now under investigation by the US Department of Justice and the Texas state Legislature.
