Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn called for people to stop “second-guessing” Uvalde police, even as a damning timeline continued to emerge, showing that the cops waited as long as an hour to engage a deranged gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers inside an elementary school.
The lawmaker was one of only a handful of officials defending the police, who were seen on video restraining hysterical parents and delaying their reponse to Tuesday’s horrific massacre inside Robb Elementary School. The gunman was only stopped when federal agents who had sped to the scene disregarded local police and took matters into their own hands. Uvalde police officials have been at a loss to answer why they did not breach the school sooner, as trapped children made repeated 911 calls begging for help.
“The second guessing and finger pointing among state and local law enforcement is destructive, distracting, and unfair,” Cornyn tweeted Saturday. “Complex scenarios require split second decisions. Easy to criticize with 20-20 hindsight.”
The second guessing and finger pointing among state and local law enforcement is destructive, distracting, and unfair. Complex scenarios require split second decisions. Easy to criticize with 20-20 hindsight https://t.co/ssq2FAInDX
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) May 28, 2022
Uvalde Police spokesman Lt. Chris Olivarez told CNN on Thursday that police were inside the school, but didn’t hunt down the suspect out of fear for their own safety.
“If they proceeded any further not knowing where this suspect was at, they could have been shot,” Olivarez said. “They could have been killed, and at that point, that gunman would have had the opportunity to kill other people inside that school.”
That answer did not help the department’s case, especially as 911 call logs and a timeline began to take shape that showed terrified fourth-graders begging for their lives as the people responsible for saving them dithered.
The 18-year-old gunman, who The Daily Wire is not naming in keeping with a policy of depriving mass shooters of the notoriety they crave, was killed when an elite border patrol agent stormed a classroom with other federal agents and shot him. The death of the gunman came a full 90 minutes after the gunman first arrived at the school campus, crashing his truck and firing at bystanders with a rifle.
“What we wanted to make sure is to act quickly, act swiftly,” Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz told Fox News.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who initially praised the police response, said Friday he was “misled” about what happened in the massacre.
“I am livid about what happened,” Abbott said during a news conference in Uvalde. “The information I was given turned out, in part, to be inaccurate, and I am absolutely livid about that.”
But while anger builds at the local police over their failure to respond, Cornyn called for an end to “finger pointing.”
“There will be plenty of time to sort this out later,” Cornyn said in another tweet. “Focus now should be on through investigation and lessons learned to prevent future tragedies, not finger pointing.”