Unbelievable! A Uvalde Texas armed police officer saw the gunman outside of Robb Elementary School shortly before he entered the building. The officer asked his supervisor for permission to shoot, but the supervisor didn’t respond in time or did not hear the request, according to a report released Wednesday by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center (ALERRT).
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It’s unclear why the initial Uvalde police officer did not immediately fire at the gunman, who had already started shooting into classrooms as he walked along the perimeter of the school.
“In this instance, the UPD officer would have heard gunshots and/or reports of gunshots and observed an individual approaching the school building armed with a rifle. A reasonable officer would conclude in this case, based upon the totality of the circumstances, that use of deadly force was warranted,” the ALERRT center, which is based at Texas State University and provides active shooter response training, wrote in the report.
The officer told investigators that he was concerned about putting children in danger if he missed, but ALERRT noted that the Texas Penal Code says “an individual is justified in using deadly force when the individual reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary to prevent the commission of murder.”
The officer was about 148 yards away from the exterior door that the gunman entered, which is well within the range of an AR-15 platform rifle, though, patrol rifle qualifications in Texas do not require officers to fire at targets farther away than 100 yards, according to ALERRT.
Authors of the 26-page report said their findings were based on video taken from the school, police body cameras, testimony from officers on the scene, and statements from investigators. Also among their findings:
— It appeared that no officer waiting in the hallway during the shooting ever tested to see if the door to the classroom was locked. The head of Texas’ state police agency has also faulted officers on the scene for not checking the doors.
— The officers had “weapons (including rifles), body armor (which may or may not have been rated to stop rifle rounds), training, and backup. The victims in the classrooms had none of these things.”
— When officers finally entered the classroom at 12:50 p.m. — more than an hour after the shooting began — they were no better equipped to confront the gunman than they had been up to that point.
— ”Effective incident command” never appears to have been established among the multiple law enforcement agencies that responded to the shooting.
ALERRT said future reports will address the second phase of active shooter response and incident command.
—Credit The Associated Press, Fox News, and Fox 46