Somewhat contentious yet sometime emotional press
conference wrapping up there with Texas DPS director
Stephen McGraw, he was answering questions and owning
criticism of the police response to that deadly school
shooting there in Uvalde Texas. Now a couple of key
things that we must point out from that news conference
first is that Director McGraw admitted he admitted tha
in hindsight the situation would have been handled
differently. He did say that the on scene commander at
the time of the shooting believed that the gunman had
barricaded himself in that classroom and that at that
time no Children were at risk. We want to get you live
right now to Newsy national correspondent Haley Bu
has been on the ground for us in Uvalde Texas and she
has more on this. So Haley, we're just listening int
that press conference with you. Obviously you are our
eyes and ears on the ground there and that moment we
really couldn't hear what some of the questions were
that were being asked. So give us some of the details
and what your biggest takeaways were from this news
conference. Yeah, good afternoon veronica Well there
were a lot of questions about the timeline here and why
police waited to breach the door. There were a lot of
tough details revealed quite a bit more specificity in
how this unfolded but also more deepened questions in
the response, I think a very significant statement fr
the director was on the officer's decision to not
breach the classroom door. The director flat out said
that was not the right decision and that's been a larg
question, why did they wait now? The director said that
the incident commander believed it had transitioned
from an active shooter to a barricaded subject and was
convinced that, he says the decision was made, that
there was more time including for them to get keys from
a janitor's room to unlock to classroom doors. The
commander, the director says thought they needed more
for a tactical breach and the director said obviously
Children were at risk and it was in fact an active
shooter situation. We learned a little bit more about
the 911 calls as well. We know those came in from two
rooms. According to the director, the director gave
some more details about what was said over those calls
saying 11 girl called the calle from the room and in a
subsequent call said that there were people dead,
multiple people dead and 8 to 9 alive at that time and
another classroom, they received another call, the
person hung up when a student told them to, the
director said in a series of 911 calls, shots could be
heard over the audio. At least two students called now
walking through the timeline. H gave a little bit more
specificity into this going by minute by minute with
what they know now and it was just before 11 30. He
says a teacher propped open the door and that was a
question investigators earlier this week that they
believed that the school was not locked where the
gunman had entered, so that he says the teacher propped
open the door. It's within a minute. The gunman
crashes. The teacher runs to get her phone. It's a few
minutes later that he was able to enter the school and
start shooting. The director says they believed more
than 100 rounds at that time based on audio evidence.
It's about two minutes after that, that the first
police officers entered. He also said patrol had gone
to a funeral home after the gunmen had fired at two
witnesses from there and who ran back over to the
funeral home nearby. Now it was 12 15 when tactical
members arrived again. Reiterating that the director
says the incident commander believed that this had
become a barricaded subject situation. It's still an
hour after the gunman entered the school that he was
killed. Another significant poi here we had heard
initially from investigators that a district officer
had initially confronted the gunman in the subsequent
interviews, the director says they have learned a
resource officer was not on campus. He heard a 911
call, sped back turns out to the wrong person driving
by the gunman in the process. Now there has also been a
look at what for warning. There could have been leading
up to this and a big part of that includes a digital
media footprint. He did clarify that initial comments,
the director had made that there were a series of
Facebook posts. He had said initially warning of
shooting the gunman shooting his grandmother and then
mentioning the school were actually through private
message, but there was more revealed in the year
leading up to this. The director says the gunman had
asked his sister to help buy a gun back in September
2021. She refused. There was a social media chat where
he discussed being a school shooter in February 2022
the next month, he talked about buying a gun and
another chat, he said he had just bought something in a
subsequent message and he posted a question, someone
asked the question, are you going to shoot up the
school? The suspect said no stop asking dumb questions
and you will see investigators say that there this is a
very large scale investigation at this point. There are
over hundreds of interviews conducted, they say
thousands of leads still to be pursued. But veronica
here a lot of the questions are centering around
response and that timeline of while those Children were
inside the classroom while there were shots going on
the series of 911 calls that decision making process to
not go into the room. So certainly we expect to hear
more details about that. But those questions still
remain at this point and of course does not change that
19 Children and two teachers were killed in the
shooting veronica Alright, National correspondent Haley
Bull in Uvalde, Texas Haley, We appreciate you with all
those details. We'll check back with you. Thank you.