Texas Senate Committee Meeting on Uvalde School Shooting

Colonel Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, called the police response to the Uvalde mass shooting at Robb Elementary School an “abject failure” and said that “not enough training was done.” His remarks came during testimony before a Texas Senate committee to investigate the shooting. Colonel McCraw said the police could have stopped the shooting within three minutes and did not check a classroom door to see if it was locked. “The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering room 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children,” he said. He also testified about other problems related to the shooting, such as school doors not being able to be locked and police radios not working. The shooting lasted for more than an hour, until a Border Patrol unit came and killed the shooter. This was the first public hearing about the massacre, in which 19 children and two adults died. close