May 27 Texas school massacre news

Alfred Garza, the father of 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, told CNN Friday that while nothing can bring his daughter back after the deadly mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, he believes someone should be held accountable over the police response — in particular regarding the time it took officers to engage with the gunman.

During a Friday news conference, Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw said the school district police chief's decision to not have officers immediately try to breach the classroom and engage the gunman was "wrong."

The chief, serving as incident commander during the shooting, thought officers were dealing with a barricaded subject and not an active shooter at the time, McCraw said.

Speaking to CNN’s Jason Carroll, Garza said he wondered if his daughter and others may have survived if authorities had acted sooner. 

“By the time the cops got there, it was already too late, you know, so they needed to act immediately,” Garza told CNN.

Garza said he he understands the anger some parents are feeling in the aftermath of shooting, and called for accountability and "consequences."

"We need to make sure that, from this point on, that something like this does not happen again, or that we are better prepared,” he said. 

Garza said he’s been told his daughter may have been one of those who tried to call 911 from the classroom in which the gunman had locked himself in. Authorities have said there were at least two calls to 911 from children during the deadly shooting.

Yesterday, CNN's Anderson Cooper interviewed Amerie's stepfather, med aide Angel Garza, who described how he learned about the death of the 10-year-old as he arrived to the school during the shooting to help.

"One little girl was just covered in blood head to toe. I thought she was injured, I asked her what was wrong. She said she was OK — she was hysterical, saying that they shot her best friend, that they killed her best friend, she was not breathing," Garza told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Wednesday.

"I asked the little girl the name, and ... she said Amerie," he said, dropping his head and weeping.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw on Friday gave a detailed timeline of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24 that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

Here are the key moments he laid out (all times are in Central Standard Time):

11:27 a.m.: Video shows that an exterior door to Ross Elementary School that gunman Salvador Ramos entered was propped open by a teacher.

11:28 a.m: Ramos crashes a vehicle near the school into a ditch, gets out and begins firing upon two people who came outside to see the crash near a funeral home. Civilians are not struck by gunfire. The teacher runs to a room to get a phone, returns to the door, and the door remains open. 

11:30 a.m.: The first 911 call is made to Uvalde police reporting a car crash and a man with a gun outside the school.

11:30 a.m.: The US Marshals Service says it received a call from a Uvalde police officer requesting assistance.  

11:31 a.m.: The shooting suspect reaches the last row of cars in the school parking lot and shooting begins outside of the school. Patrol vehicles reach the funeral home, and a patrol car drives by shooter, who is hunkered down by another vehicle.

11:32 a.m.: The suspect fires at the school. 

11:33 a.m.: The suspect enters the school and begins shooting into a classroom. He shot more than 100 rounds.

11:35 a.m.: A total of seven officers are on the scene, and three officers enter the school, later followed by an additional team of three more officers and a sheriff. Two of the initial officers received grazing wounds from the suspect while the classroom door was closed.

11:37 a.m.: Sixteen rounds were fired from 11:37 a.m. to 11:44 a.m.

11:43 a.m.: Robb Elementary announces on Facebook that "Robb Elementary is under a Lockdown Status due to gunshots in the area."

11:51 a.m.: More officers arrive.

12:03 p.m.: As many as 19 officers are in the school's hallway. 

12:03 p.m.: A girl in room 112 of the school makes a 911 call.

12:10 p.m.: A 911 call is received from the same girl in room 112, reporting multiple people are dead.

12:13 p.m.: The girl makes another 911 call.

12:15 p.m.: Border Patrol's tactical unit BorTac team arrives on scene.

12:16 p.m.: The same girl makes another 911 call, reporting there were “eight to nine students alive."

12:17 p.m.: Robb Elementary announces on Facebook: "There is an active shooter at Robb Elementary. Law enforcement is on site. Your cooperation is needed at this time by not visiting the campus. As soon as more information is gathered it will be shared. The rest of the district is under a Secure Status."

12:19 p.m.: A different 911 call is received from a caller in room 111, but the caller hung up after another student told them to.

12:21 p.m.: Suspect fires again.

12:21 p.m.: Another 911 call is received, and three shots fired are heard.  

12:21 p.m.: Officers move down the hallway.

12:36 p.m.: There is a 911 call that last 21 seconds, with a student saying, "he shot the door."  

12:43 and 12:47 p.m.: 911 caller says "please send police now." 

12:46 p.m.: 911 caller can hear police next door.

12:50 p.m.: Shots are heard being fired over the 911 call.

12:50 p.m.: Law enforcement breach door using keys from janitor and kill suspect. 

12:51 p.m.: On 911 call, it sounds like officers are moving children out of the room.

Chilling details continue to emerge about Tuesday’s mass shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

One of the young survivors told CNN that she and her classmates were watching a movie when the shooter entered her room and shot her teacher and many of her friends.

According to officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety, the shooter was in the school for up to an hour and had barricaded himself inside adjoining classrooms.

As all this was taking place, parents had joined dozens of law enforcement officers outside the school, desperate to know if their children were still alive.

Pete Luna, the general manager of The Uvalde Leader-News, was among those outside, waiting for a positive development. He then saw a group of children who were escaping through windows with the help of law enforcement. Luna’s photos are some of the few that CNN has seen from that turbulent time when the gunman was still in the school.

View more photos here.

Taking a question from CNN's Shimon Prokupecz during Friday's news conference, FBI special agent Oliver Rich, who leads the FBI's San Antonio field office, addressed the possibility of an "independent investigation" into the mass shooting.

"First, I want to say I understand there are a lot of questions and a lot of frustration in and our hearts go out to the families and victims of this tragedy," Rich said.

"We are here to assist in the investigation, to provide the support to the community," he continued, citing a total of 200 people from the bureau who he said have been working in Uvalde over the past four days. "We have people working all across the country to support this community and to support this investigation. We are continuing in that vein."

"If the facts bear out that there is a federal nexus, then the FBI will conduct an appropriate investigation at that time," Rich concluded. "But for now, we continue in this to support the Texas Rangers."

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said there were at least two calls to 911 from children during the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School.

He laid out one of the calls. McCraw did not provide the name of a girl who called and did not release the audio, saying it’s better that he reads it “than you listen to it."

Here's the timeline from him:

While taking questions from reporters during Friday's news conference, Col. Steven McCraw of the Texas Department of Public Safety criticized some aspects of the police response to the shooting, in particular regarding the time it took for officers to engage with the gunman.

"A decision was made that this was a barricaded subject situation," McCraw said of the incident commander's "thought process" at the time.

Rather than immediately try to breach the classroom and engage with the gunman, McCraw said the commander — who he later identified as the school district's chief of police — decided that "there was time to retrieve the keys, and wait for a tactical team with the equipment to go ahead and breach the door and take on the subject."

"We believe there should have been an entry as soon as you can," McCraw continued. "When there's an active shooter, the rules change."

The revelation explains the lengthy wait between when officers first arrived to the school at 11:44 a.m. local time and when a tactical team finally entered the room and killed the gunman at 12:50 p.m. local time. The tactical team was able to enter using keys from a janitor, McCraw said.

Hear the Texas official during the press conference here:

CNN's Nora Neus, Eric Levenson, Michelle Krupa and Elizabeth Wolfe contributed reporting to this post. 

The Uvalde shooter did not post publicly on Facebook that he shot his grandmother and then was going to shoot at a school, Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw said. It was a private message on a Facebook application, he said.

The shooter, Salvador Ramos, asked his sister in September 2021 to help him buy a gun, and she "flatly refused," McCraw said.

In Instagram chats with four people in March, he discussed buying a gun, McCraw said.

On March 3, one person wrote, "word on the street is you're buying a gun." Ramos replied, "just bought something rn," McCraw said.

On March 14, there was an Instagram post by Ramos in quotations "10 more days."

"A user replied, 'are you going to shoot up a school or something?' The subject replied, 'no and stop asking dumb questions, and you'll see,' McCraw said.

Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw outlined the ammunition that was found at the school and on the gunman.

There were a total of 58 magazines at the school related to the crime scene, he said:

There were two magazines in the suspect's residence, for a total of 60 magazines.

The gunman purchased and had a total of 1,657 total rounds of ammunition, 315 of the rounds were inside the school and 142 of those were spent cartridges.

After firing "multiple shots" outside, the gunman entered Robb Elementary in Uvalde at 11:33 a.m. local time, Col. Steven McCraw of the Texas Department of Public Safety said at a news conference on Friday.

"The suspect begins shooting into room 111 or 112. It's not possible to determine from the video angle that we have at this point in time," McCraw said.

Police officers were also inside the school within minutes, having entered using the same door as the gunman. "A total of seven officers were on the scene," McCraw said, by 11:35 a.m., which is approximately when two of those officers were shot — "grazing wounds," he clarified — near the door to the classroom the gunman was in.

The gunman then continued to fire inside the classroom, with the door closed and locked, McCraw said.

"He had purchased and had a total of 1,657 total rounds of ammunition," McCraw said, and fired nearly 200 rounds during his rampage. Authorities found 142 spent cartridges inside the school, with another 22 found outside on school property and another 22 again found at the site of the gunman's crashed car.

Another 173 live rounds from the gunman's supplies were found inside the school.

Thirty-five spent law enforcement cartridges were also located inside the school. "Eight of those were in the hallway," McCraw said, and "27 were inside classroom 111, where the suspect was killed." 

CNN's Shawn Nottingham contributed reporting.