911 Calls Against a Shooter in a School Building: Revealing Nolasco and the Uvalde School Police Chief
We found a classroom that had some children in it. We realized that this is where the shooter was. He had a good chance of hitting us. So, we elected to not clear the kids,” he said. “We tell them, ‘Y’all are gonna be OK. Don’t worry, you just stay there.
Khloie was a student. She was a child at the time. It took 40 minutes from the time of her first call to when law enforcement forced their way into her classroom.
According to reports, the newly surfaced recordings include more than 20 calls, including those between officers and dispatchers, and reveal a chaotic response without clear communication. At least one time a dispatch gave incorrect information to personnel.
The law enforcement response to the shooting has been criticized, with agencies not taking responsibility or blaming each other. Several top officials have been fired.
“We’re taking too long,” a medic says, according to reports. That was minutes before Khloie Torres started her third 911 call. She survived the shooting.
The radio signals of law enforcement officers were not always smooth inside the school building. Pete Arredondo abandoned his radio at the fence of the school after he was fired as Uvalde School Police Chief.
Despite hearing gunshots, officers did not hear screams or cries because they were not close to the closed doors.
CNN’s review of Nolasco’s actions offers the latest evidence of senior law enforcement officers not taking command or following protocols to stop active shooters and get swift treatment to any victims. At least four people were dead, two children and one teacher, when officers first arrived at the classroom after the shooter entered.
He acknowledged there were victims at 12:20 p.m., saying on footage obtained through another officer’s body cam that “We have victims in there. I don’t want to have any more. You know what I’m talking about?
A Maryland teacher made false rumors about multiple stabbings at Green Valley Elementary School, Monrovia, via an emergency management strategy to protect herself and her students
The Maryland law enforcement and school district officials are investigating why a teacher at the elementary school made false rumors about multiple stab wounds at the school and walked 27 fifth- graders off campus.
Shortly before 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, deputies received a call about multiple stabbings at Green Valley Elementary School in Monrovia, according to a news release from the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office. It’s roughly 40 minutes west of Baltimore.
The sheriff’s office says that they quickly found out there had been no stabs at the school but that 27 students and a teacher were missing. The teacher and students were found at a local cafe by authorities. All of the missing students were accounted for, and returned to their families.
According to a statement from Frederick County Public Schools, the teacher believed “there was a concern for safety” and acted in what the district called the “avoid strategy,” which staff and students are trained to use when they believe there is an immediate threat to student safety.
The teacher then decided to lead the students through the woods up to a nearby cafe – a decision which authorities say she made due to her taking a part in emergency management procedures.
She has the children remove all their clothing and accessories in order to avoid detection as they are walking in the woods.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/04/us/maryland-teacher-false-report-stabbings-investigation/index.html
When Uvalde Sheriff Robb Nolasco stayed at the school after the shooting happened, and when he did, he told them he was sorry
We are grateful for the fact that it was a non-credible threat, but we know that it was upsetting for the students involved and the community at large. The school district said they regret what happened.
The teacher was taken into custody, which does not mean she was charged, according to authorities. She was taken to a hospital for evaluation but not handcuffed.
The school district held a meeting for parents of the students who are affected to learn more about how they can get support for them and an additional mental health staff will be added to the school over time, officials said.
The Uvalde County Sheriff rushed towards Robb Elementary School when he heard that a man fired his gun after crashing his pickup truck.
He was a part of the 376 officers who went to help. But, unlike the vast majority, he had the rank to easily take charge, he had vital information about the shooter and a call about victims in a classroom, and others looked to him as a commander on the scene with up-to-date information.
But despite more than 30 years of law enforcement experience for the city and county, despite knowing not only his own staff but many in the command structures in the multiple agencies that arrived at Robb, Nolasco chose to stay at a different crime scene, already under control, as a far greater disaster initially unfolded. He did not make sure that cries for help from trapped girls were taken seriously when he arrived.
In the days after the murder of 19 children and two teachers at their school, Nolasco was comforted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and US Sen. Ted Cruz.
An elected leader answering only to voters, he has not been subject to the same scrutiny as the school police chief – now fired; the acting city police chief – now retired before he could be fired; and members of the Texas Rangers and the Texas Department of Public Safety, who have all faced official scrutiny, leading to suspensions and at least one termination.
CNN has now detailed Nolasco’s actions in our investigation into the leaderless morass and lethal inaction at Uvalde. Requests for interviews were turned down by Nolasco. He told CNN he thought his response was adequate when they caught up with him in November. I do.
It’s not clear if Nolasco knew that the 18-year-old who shot his grandmother, was also the school shooter. CNN obtained a record of an interview in which he said that it would not take a rocket scientist to connect the two.
Who made this happen to you? CNN obtained a recording that Nolasco can be heard asking on, which is from a body camera worn by his deputy. The footage was uploaded to a police website immediately after the shooting and made available to the Texas Rangers who will be looking into the response.
CNN analysis of radio traffic as well as footage from body-worn and surveillance cameras indicates the name – which CNN is not repeating so as not to fuel his notoriety – was not immediately shared with officers at the school, even as they sought that information through other means.
A request was made at 11:43 a.m. to check the truck’s plate for a clue to the shooter’s identity. Eleven minutes later the owner of the vehicle was identified, but it was not the shooter. Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, the police chief at the school, tried to negotiate with the individual in Room 101 and 112 but he could not say what he was talking about. The post-Columbine policies against active shooters are against any negotiation that goes against them.
Acting Uvalde police chief Lt. Mariano Pargas, who like Nolasco could have taken command, chose to resign after CNN reported that he knew children needed rescuing and did not organize help.
CNN has also revealed the actions and inaction that have seen a Texas Ranger and a state police captain put under review, and a state police sergeant terminated. Another officer who quit the state force while she was under investigation and took a job with the Uvalde school district was fired by that district after CNN showed how she waited outside the school during the attack but said it would have been different if her own son had been inside.
Nolasco said that he was not at the school for at least the first 35 minutes of the 77-minute standoff in a recent interview with CNN.
He told the investigator he stayed to arrange the ambulance and then made some calls while the shooter was still on the loose.
There was no effective communication that should have been made that active shooter protocol should be followed, either on the scene or among a group of teams that were headed there. It was during the second hour of the response that he told investigators he was still dealing with a barricaded subject.
The DPS captain himself is under investigation for his actions that day. He told investigators that he asked Nolasco if he had a command post before he arrived, and that he thought the sheriff was in charge. “I assumed the sheriff was running the show,” he said in one interview.
In a second interview with an investigator, he elaborated, “I know the sheriff has operational control there at the time, and we’re getting with the sheriff to get firsthand information from the incident as it was occurring.”
Nolasco, the high-resolution gunman and the deputy of the sheriff at the school where the gunman fatally wounded an unarmed student
Nolasco also disputed that to CNN. “It’s his impression, that’s on him. He is a captain. If that was the case, it was an assumption. It was not seen as valid.
CNN showed last month that Pargas was aware of the situation when he responded to the call from the student.
Nolasco complained to an investigator and CNN about how poorly the radios worked in and around the school, and that the noise from helicopters was detrimental too.
The sheriff was with DPS Capt. Betancourt when Betancourt issued an order – that no one heeded – to stop the entry to the classroom that finally killed the gunman at 12:50 p.m.
“When you have hostages in there, you really don’t want to break down doors,” he said, in direct contradiction of active shooter training for law enforcement, which calls first for officers to neutralize the suspect and “stop the killing,” even if it puts responders or hostages in danger.
He talked about the suffering of his deputy after the end of the interview and said it had been traumatic for him.