Local police initially prevented federal agents from entering Robb Elementary on Tuesday to confront the Uvalde school shooter.
NBC News reports two senior federal law enforcement officials claim federal agents waited 30 minutes after their arrival at the school before deciding to enter the building.
Agents from BORTAC, the Customs and Border Protection tactical unit, and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations were asked to wait by local police, before they “opted of their own volition to lead the stack of officers inside the school and take down the shooter.”
The news arrives hours after Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, admitted that local police made the “wrong decision” in their delay in confronting the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers in the mass shooting.
“From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course, it was not the right decision. It was a wrong decision. Period. There was no excuse for that,” McCraw told reporters on Friday. “There were plenty of officers to do what needed to be done, with one exception, is that the incident commander inside believed he needed more equipment and more officers to do a tactical breach at that time.”
McCraw said the on-site commander was initially “convinced” the children were not in danger.
“He was convinced at the time that there was no more threat to the children and that the subject was barricaded and that they had time to organize” before entering the classroom, McCraw said Friday, per an initial report from the Associated Press.
