‘I was misled’: Texas governor says he is ‘livid’ about receiving inaccurate information about school shooting

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he was “misled” about certain information that he was given by law enforcement officials leading the investigation into the deadly school shooting in Uvalde.

“I was misled. I am livid about what happened. I was on this very stage two days ago, and I was telling the public information that had been told to me in a room just a few yards behind where we’re located right now. I wrote down hand notes in detail about what everybody in that room told me in sequential order about what happened. And when I came out here on this stage and told the public what happened, it was a recitation of what people in that room told me — whether it be law enforcement officials or non-law enforcement officials, whatever the case may be,” Abbott said during a news conference Friday in Uvalde.

He said he expects authorities leading the investigation to “get to the bottom of every fact with absolute certainty” about the shooting.

More background: During a Friday news conference, Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw said the school district on-scene commander’s decision to not have officers immediately try to breach the classroom and confront the gunman was “wrong.” The Texas official said the commander at the time believed that the situation had “transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject.”

While officers waited outside adjoining classrooms at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, children inside the room repeatedly called 911 and pleaded for help, he said.

The damning revelation explained 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.

Texas insurance companies and private donations will cover health care costs for the the injured victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting, Gov. Greg Abbott announced at a news briefing in Uvalde.

Abbott said every family impacted by the shooting has been assigned an advocate to support them.

In addition, air fare and lodging will be covered for victims’ families free of charge to help them get to Texas to be with their loved ones.

The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs has “a fund to pay for needed supplies right now, whether it be food or gas or other essential needs, and that money is available right now as we speak,” Abbott said.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott opened a news conference in Uvalde Friday afternoon by announcing free mental health care services and support for “the totality” of the community following Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.

The services can be accessed by calling the phone number 888-690-0799. The help line “will be answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” Abbott said, “whether it be today, tomorrow, next month, or next year.”

In pre-recorded remarks to the National Rifle Association convention in Houston, Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott said “as Texans and as Americans, we grieve and mourn these families” affected by the shooting in Uvalde.

“The courageous actions of the many teachers and staff at Robb Elementary School should be applauded,” Abbott added.

The Texas governor pointed to laws limiting the ownership or use of firearms, saying “just as laws didn’t stop the killing, we will not let his evil acts stop us from uniting the community that he tried to destroy.”

Shortly after his remarks aired at the conference, Abbott held a briefing about the shooting where he said new laws will “absolutely” be passed — but indicated they will be focused on health care and not gun legislation.

National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre told the audience at the conference that “every NRA member, and I know, every decent American is mourning right now,” but he insisted that “restricting the fundamental, human right of law-abiding Americans to defend themselves is not the answer, it never has been.”

When US Border Patrol agents who belong to a specialized unit responded to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, at around 12:15 p.m. local time, the officer in charge had already made the determination that it was a barricaded subject situation, according to a source familiar with the situation.

The team then waited, not breaching the classroom where the shooter was holed up until nearly 40 minutes later. 

On Friday, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said members of the specialized unit known as the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC, began to arrive at 12:15 p.m. local time. He said they finally breached at 12:57 p.m. local time, after the incident commander had determined “they needed more equipment and officers to do a tactical breach.”

In incidents like the one Tuesday, where local authorities are in command of the scene, Border Patrol often serves in a support role and the agency on command will dictate what they do, the source said, adding that they try not to overrule the authorities. While the team would defer to the local command, if they felt there was a need to, they could override that. There is no indication yet this occurred at the school this week. 

Typically, in a situation like that, the source said, efforts are made to get people in the area — in this case, children — to safety.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement it had no additional information to offer at this time.

“It’s going to haunt them forever,” the source said, referring to the agents who responded and what they saw at the scene.

At a news conference Friday, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw said the person who made the decision not to breach the Uvalde elementary school classroom where a gunman was shooting children and teachers was the school district police chief, calling it the “wrong decision” to not engage the gunman sooner. 

The Uvalde School District Police Chief is Pedro “Pete” Arredondo.

Pressed by reporters if Arredondo was on the scene during the shooting, McCraw declined to comment. 

Arredondo is identified on the Uvalde School District website as the police chief and was introduced as the police chief at news conferences on Tuesday in the hours following the shooting at Robb Elementary.

At the news conferences, Arredondo stated the gunman was deceased, but provided little other information on the massacre, citing an “active investigation” and taking no questions from those gathered.

CNN attempted to reach Arredondo at his home on Friday, but there was no response. 

Arredondo has nearly three decades of law enforcement experience, according to the school district, and he was recently elected to a seat on Uvalde’s city council. 

A board of trustees for the school district approved Arredondo to head the department in 2020. The district’s superintendent, Hal Harrell, said in a Facebook post at the time that the board was “confident with our selection and impressed with his experience, knowledge, and community involvement.”

Arredondo told The Uvalde Leader-News after his appointment that he was happy to return to work in his hometown and that he wanted to emphasize education and training at the police department. “We can never have enough training,” he told the newspaper. 

In March, Arredondo posted on Facebook that his department was hosting an “active shooter training” at Uvalde High School in an effort to prepare local law enforcement to respond to “any situation that may arise.” A flyer for the event he posted stated that topics covered would include priorities for school-based law enforcement and how to “stop the killing.” 

Arredondo previously served as a captain at a school-district police department in Laredo, Texas, and in multiple roles at the Uvalde Police Department. 

Anthony Barksdale, CNN law enforcement analyst and former acting Baltimore Police Commissioner, offered some context as to why larger law enforcement agencies responding Tuesday to the deadly mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, were taking commands from the school district’s police chief as they arrived on scene. 

But if officers on the scene of an incident come to believe the “incident commander” is making the wrong calls, they can ignore or overrule his decisions, Barksdale said. “And you face him later on and… deal with it,” he added.

“This was a case where they should have kept the pressure up; kept engaged trying to breach that door and deal with this shooter,” Barksdale continued. “If things get quiet, if there’s a lull, maybe there’s a weapon malfunction. Maybe he’s trying to reload. Maybe he’s out of ammo. And that’s the time to get him. You keep going; you pour it on. You put the pressure on, and you don’t stop until that threat is completely incapacitated.”  

“You’re going in there to kill this shooter. Those little kids deserved that on that day,” said an emotional Barksdale. “And they didn’t get it.”

More background: During a Friday news conference, Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw said the school district on-scene commander’s decision to not have officers immediately try to breach the classroom and confront the gunman was “wrong.” The Texas official said the commander at the time believed that the situation had “transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject.”

While officers waited outside adjoining classrooms at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, children inside the room repeatedly called 911 and pleaded for help, he said.

The damning revelation explained 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. The tactical team was able to enter using keys from a janitor, McCraw said.

CNN’s Eric Levenson, Virginia Langmaid, Shimon Prokupecz and Nora Neus contributed reporting to this post. 

Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said on Twitter that the committee will hold a hearing on gun violence on June 15, following the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. 

See his tweet:

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.