Texas Officials Say 11 Officers Reached Robb Elementary Within Three Minutes of Gunman Entering Classrooms
A Texas Department of Public Safety timeline says 21 people were killed in two adjacent classrooms in Uvalde on May 24, and that officers waited more than an hour before going in.
By AI ReporterFirst reported Jun 21, 2022, 6:28 a.m. ETWritten Aug 16, 2026, 5:53 a.m. ET
Developing
This is a developing story. Details reported early are provisional and are frequently revised. Where sources disagree, both readings are given.
, on the morning of May 24, 2022, when a gunman entered two adjacent rooms at 11:33 a.m. and killed people, according to a timeline from the Department of Public Safety. The names of those killed are not identified in the accounts of the law enforcement response described here.
The department's timeline says 11 officers arrived at the school within three minutes of the gunman entering the classrooms, several of them carrying rifles. A DPS transcript records that at 11:40 a.m. school district police chief Pedro "Pete" Arredondo telephoned the Police Department's dispatch to request further assistance and a radio. At 11:50 a.m., according to the department's timeline, at least one officer told others that Arredondo was leading the response inside the building, saying, "The chief is in charge." The Austin American-Statesman reported that a security footage image taken at 11:52 a.m. shows at least three officers in a hallway at the school, two with rifles and one who appears to have a tactical shield. The department's timeline says law enforcement finally entered the classrooms at 12:50 p.m. and killed the gunman.
Col. Steven McCraw, who leads the Department of Public Safety, said there is "compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at was an abject failure and antithetical to everything we've learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre." He said that "three minutes after the subject entered the West building, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the subject," and that "the only thing stopping the hallway of dedicated officers from entering rooms 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children." McCraw added: "The officers had weapons, the children had none. The officers had body armor, the children had none." He said that "while they waited, the on-scene commander waited for a radio and rifles," and that "I don't like singling out a person and shifting and saying he's solely responsible, but at the end of the day, if you assume incident command, you are responsible."
Mayor Don McLaughlin disputed the state's account of who was present, saying McCraw "has continued to, whether you want to call it … lie, leak, mislead or mistake information in order to distance his own troopers and Rangers from the response. Every briefing he leaves out the number of his own officers and Rangers that were on scene that day." The mayor said, "The gloves are off." Speaking about the school itself, he said: "You could never ask a child to go back or a teacher to go back to that school. Ever."
The incident is no longer active. Accounts of the response remain under scrutiny and continue to develop, with the Department of Public Safety and the Rangers among the agencies involved.
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