Police under spotlight over speed of response to school massacre

Law enforcement officials are coming under heavy scrutiny on Thursday over their response to Tuesday’s massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two educators were killed by a lone gunman in the country’s deadliest school shooting in almost a decade.

At a press conference where reporters hurled questions about whether police had waited too long to enter Robb Elementary School amid the violence, an official on camera said law enforcement had not yet verified if witnesses were urging the police to move in and discussing entering the school themselves.

“We have not verified if that’s a true statement or not or whether it’s just rumor out there,” said Victor Escalon, a regional director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. “You’ve got to understand we’re getting a lot of information we’re trying to track down and see what is true. We want to vet it.”