Uvalde school district police chief Pete Arredondo, who commanded the police response to the Robb Elementary School shooting, was unaware of 911 calls coming from inside the school building when he declared the situation was no longer an active shooting but a "barricaded subject," according to a Texas state senator.
The revelation comes after officials said that the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, barricaded himself in a fourth grade classroom — where he killed 19 students and two teachers — for more than an hour as as many as 19 police officers gathered outside the classroom but did not engage him.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said local officers waited too long to enter the school and engage the shooter during a press conference on Friday. He said Arredondo believed the situation was "no longer an active shooting" but a "barricaded subject" under the assumption that all the children inside the two connected classrooms were dead, despite students inside the room still calling 911 for help.
State Senator Roland Gutierrez said 911 calls were going to city police but were not communicated to Arredondo, calling it a "system failure," the Associated Press reported.
Federal Border Patrol agents ultimately killed the shooter after entering the school on their own, defying local law enforcement that had asked them to hold back, two senior federal law enforcement sources told NBC News on Friday.
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