Newly released recordings are raising more questions about law enforcement’s response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last week.
ABC News obtained audio of an apparent Texas 911 dispatcher relaying information from a child inside a classroom to police at the scene of the massacre.
The child speaking to the dispatcher appears to have survived a round of gunfire.
“Child is advising he is in the room, full of victims,” the dispatcher can be heard saying in ABC’s recording. “Full of victims at this moment.”
“Is anybody inside of the building?” the dispatcher asks.
Minutes later, the dispatcher says again: “Eight to nine children.”
ABC News said that the 911 call occurred around 12:13 p.m. The outlet also reported that gunshots could be heard just minutes after an officer told bystanders at the scene — including many of the students’ parents — to stand back because there was a man inside the school.
Meanwhile, the San Antonio, Texas, news channel KSAT 12 obtained audio of a recorded phone message that parents in Robb Elementary’s school district received at 12:20 p.m. on the day of the shooting.
In the message, a school official tells parents that there is an “active shooter at Robb Elementary” and asks them to stay away from the campus.
Police who responded to the Texas school shooting — in which 19 children and two teachers died — are being heavily criticized for their slow and seemingly cowardly response. Public officials and law enforcement agencies have provided changing and sometimes contradictory accounts of what happened.
The New York Times reports that at 11:30 a.m., the gunman locked himself inside of two conjoining classrooms. The Uvalde school district police chief, Pete Arredondo, ordered officers to wait outside the locked classrooms in the hallway for over an hour because he believed the gunman was a “barricaded subject” and not an active shooter.
This happened despite continued gunfire and the 911 calls from inside the classrooms.
Ultimately, Border Patrol tactical agents unlocked the classroom door with a key obtained from a janitor, then shot and killed the gunman, according to the Times.