Update: Some Answers from Uvalde, But Haunting Questions Still Remain
BUCK: So there you have the press conference.
Clay, the big piece of information that we just heard that is contrary to published reports as of this morning we talked about on the show —
CLAY: Yep.
BUCK: — there was no armed resource officer, there was no confrontation.
This murdering psychopath essentially waltzed into the school with an AR-15 and the doors seem to have been opened and there was nobody to stop him, nothing, no security. So that’s a dramatic shift in the narrative.
And just my personal impression of listening to this is some of these law enforcement officers on the scene know they got a big problem on their hands right now with people asking, “How do you sit there for an hour?” This is one untrained 18-year-old with a rifle who is murdering dozens of kids, how do you sit there as trained law enforcement for an hour and wait for the BORTAC team to come in and eliminate the threat?
CLAY: That is the question. So just to reiterate for people who may not have been able to hear everything, no security officer. It doesn’t appear the door was even locked. So he walked right into the school.
And the question that I wanted to get answered that I have not heard — maybe it will get asked — was the school alerted and aware there was any armed person in the vicinity? Right, because they said they got a call at 11:30 about the accident in the car and the man who was armed.
We don’t know how far that accident was, necessarily — at least I haven’t heard — from the school. Was the school alerted there’s an armed man in the vicinity? If so, why was the immediate aftermath not a lockdown scenario in the school, which is commonplace, why was there no school resource officer armed there? Do they never have one? That’s another question. Why in the world was the door unlocked? It appears the doors were open to the classroom. Based on these facts.
BUCK: Open to him, apparently, and he was able to lock it from the inside, and they couldn’t get in.
CLAY: Right. So all of this would appear to be an epic level failure of security at its most basic level. If that door is locked maybe he fires his way in, maybe he shoots his way in but you would think at least then you’re hearing the gunshots.
It also sounds, Buck, like the initial murders happened almost instantaneously, because they say that they made contact with this guy within four minutes and then waited, to your point, an hour. An hour? With a lone gunman in classroom filled with children before you actually manage to storm in the classroom?
BUCK: And he was firing — they said in the press conference as well there was active firing certainly at law enforcement, and they don’t know, by the way — these are bullets — I mean, these are 556 rounds, they’re gonna go through walls. It’s not clear how many windows there were, how that was playing out. But the active firing, he could be firing at officers and executing more kids.
CLAY: Yeah, you’re right.
BUCK: They don’t know. The law enforcement officers don’t know. So they’re sitting there for an hour? An hour is a long time.
CLAY: Incredibly long time to not have made a decision to go in. And, by the way, again, you just heard us running that interview live with the spokesperson there.
Some of the information that we started off the show asking about, we’re getting some of those answers. I think these are important factual answers, but things that are gonna be haunting for a long time: Why was that school not locked down? Why was the door unlocked that allowed this guy to be able to enter? And why did it take an hour given that police officers were responding within four minutes to that school?
We’ve got a lot of questions we still need to know the answers to.
