UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Javier Cazares raced to his daughter’s school when he heard there was a shooting, leaving his truck running with the door open as he ran into the school yard. In his rush, he didn't bring his gun.
He spent the next 35 to 45 agonizing minutes scanning the children fleeing Robb Elementary School for his 9-year-old “firecracker,” Jacklyn. All the while, he yearned to run in himself — and grew increasingly agitated, along with other parents, that the police weren't doing more to stop the teenage gunman who holed up in a classroom, killing kids.
“A lot of us were arguing with the police, ‘You all need to go in there. You all need to do your jobs,’” said Cazares, an Army veteran. “We were ready to go to work and rush in.”
Nineteen children and two teachers were ultimately shot dead in the roughly 80 minutes the gunman spent inside the school in Uvalde, Texas, a small, predominantly Latino community that sits among vegetable fields halfway between San Antonio and the U.S.-Mexico border.
This account of the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook is based on law enforcement’s timeline, records and numerous interviews with Uvalde residents in the hours and days after the massacre.
