In yet another revelation that the police response to the May 24 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was completely incompetent and may have actually compounded the tragedy, CNN reported Monday night that the town’s acting police chief had been informed that there were “eight to nine” children who were still alive and trapped with the shooter in two adjoining classrooms at Robb Elementary School. The cop, Lt. Mariano Pargas, didn’t do anything to organize a rescue of the children, and did nothing for a half hour, until a tactical team from the Border Patrol entered the classroom and killed the shooter.
CNN reports that Pargas
called his Uvalde Police Department dispatchers to get details after they relayed a call over the police radio from 10-year-old Khloie Torres that she was in a room “full of victims,” according to a recorded conversation obtained by CNN from sources close to the investigation into the failed law enforcement response to the massacre.
We’ve known since a few days after the shooting that police on the scene were confused, with communications problems and an unclear chain of command that led to a 77-minute delay between the arrival of the first cops at the school — just minutes after the gunman entered a back door and began shooting — and the eventual killing of the shooter. Cops on the scene said they hadn’t been informed of 911 calls from children asking for help, and the Uvalde Schools police chief who was supposedly in charge had said he thought the shooter was barricaded in a classroom but not putting any more children in danger.
CNN notes that the recording of Pargas’s call “proves for the first time that a senior officer was directly made aware of a 911 call from inside the classroom” and that he was given detailed information that children were alive — right down to the room number.
This is just infuriating to read:
The conversation, recorded routinely as part of police procedure, shows Pargas calling at 12:16 p.m., about six minutes after Khloie reached 911 and when she was still on the line with a dispatcher, and four minutes after the call information was relayed on the Uvalde police radio channel.
“The calls you got in from the … from one of the students, what did they say?” he asks.
The dispatcher responds: “OK, Khloie’s going to be, it’s Khloie. She’s in Room 112, Mariano, 112.”
Pargas asks: “So how many are still alive?” and is told: “Eight to nine are still alive. She’s not too sure … She’s not too sure how many are actually DOA or possibly injured. We’re trying …”
Pargas ends the call with “OK, OK thanks” and disconnects.
And then, he apparently proceeded to do virtually nothing with that information. CNN reports that video from the school’s surveillance system and from body cameras shows that while Pargas “mentions injured victims to a Border Patrol officer” at 12:17, right after the call, he didn’t mention the survivors to a Texas Ranger a minute later.
Pargas is last observed walking away from the school’s entrance at 12:20 p.m. New angles of the hallway security cameras obtained by CNN confirm Pargas does not reenter the hallway near room 112 where officers are gathering and eventually breach the classroom door some 30 minutes later.
As far as anyone can tell, he did nothing at all to let others know there were children trapped in the classroom and asking for help. CNN notes that, of the 19 kids and two teachers who died in the shooting, “At least three of the dead – two children and one teacher – survived their initial injuries and died after the classrooms were breached.”
We can’t know for certain that any of the three would have lived if police stormed the classroom earlier, but they may well have had a better chance. Jesus.
Also, CNN explains,
Recounting what happened in an interview with a Texas Ranger and an FBI agent two days after the shooting, Pargas makes no mention of being aware at the time that children were with the shooter in the conjoining classrooms of 111 and 112, or of the 911 call, according to records of interviews obtained by CNN.
But he did know that teacher Eva Mireles had been shot in her classroom as he was told by her husband, a former member of Pargas’s police department then working for the school police, Pargas said. He said he observed the officer, Ruben Ruiz, tensing, and decided he should be disarmed and taken out of the hallway.
Pargas was concerned that Ruiz might prematurely storm the classroom on his own.
In another interview in June, Pargas said he couldn’t remember whether he’d heard of 911 calls coming from kids trapped in the classrooms.
“I don’t remember. I really don’t,” he said. “I know somebody said, and I’m not sure if it was dispatch or somebody, I remember somebody saying that they thought there was a kid calling and calling dispatch that he was inside.”
Asked if he relayed that information, he replied: “I’m almost sure I did to the people that were lined up (in the hallway).”
Again, he didn’t mention that he’d called the dispatcher himself, and said he didn’t know what was going on in the classrooms.
Later in the interview, he added: “The last thing we thought was that he had actually shot the kids. We thought he had shot up in the air, broken the lights. We had no idea what was behind those doors.”
He asked the dispatcher, we now know from the audio recordings. Pargas told CNN that he can explain everything, but that can only be as part of the official investigation because his lawyer advised him to not comment.
Does it get worse? Yep. CNN points out that video also shows that Pargas was told by a Uvalde PD detective about the 911 calls shortly before his 12:16 call to the dispatcher:
“Full of victims, child called 911 saying the room’s full of victims,” he is told at 12:12 p.m., as seen on footage from a body camera worn by another officer.
“The room is full of victims,” the detective reiterates as Pargas pulls the radio from the detective’s vest. “Child 911, child 911 call.”
Pargas then walks inside the school building where officers from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies were lined up at the end of a hallway leading to the classrooms.
“A child just called that they have victims in there,” he says before turning and leaving the area.
And then nothing at all happened for another half hour.
After CNN’s reporting, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said Tuesday he was “outraged” by the reporting, and that Pargas, who has been on administrative leave since July, “will not be a member of the Uvalde police department. At the very latest at the end of the week, if not sooner.”
He also said he hadn’t been briefed by investigators on Pargas’s lack of action that day.
[McLaughlin] complained that he and city leaders had been repeatedly blindsided by CNN’s investigative reporting on the law enforcement response, from local officers but also including the actions of officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The lack of information hindered decision making but was also hard for the families of the victims to whom he has promised to get the truth, he said.
Maybe now that Gov. Greg Abbott has been safely reelected, we’ll eventually get a real explanation of everything that went wrong in Uvalde. But hey, no rush.
[CNN / CNN / Image created using DreamStudio Lite AI]
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