Uvalde police have come under scrutiny after it was revealed they pepper-sprayed and detained several desperate parents who tried to save their children.
On Tuesday, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos barricaded himself inside Robb Elementary School before shooting dead 19 young students and two teachers who tried to protect the children.
After the police surrounded the school and the news had spread, desperate parents rushed to the scene and urged the officers to storm the facility and apprehend the shooter.
“The police were doing nothing. They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere,” Angeli Rose Gomez, a parent whose two young children are enrolled in the school, told the Wall Street Journal.
According to some reports, the police waited for SWAT and refused to enter the school for almost an hour after the shooting began.
The officers’ response prompted fury among parents who demanded immediate action and wanted to storm the school themselves to save their children.
As Gomez revealed, she was handcuffed by federal marshals for “intervening in an active investigation” after she refused to back down.
After convincing a Uvalde officer to release her, Gomez secretly jumped the fence and rushed into the school herself. She safely brought out her two children.
Gomez further alleged that some parents were tackled to the ground, handcuffed, and pepper-sprayed after attempting to take matters into their own hands to save their kids.
Recalling the horrific moments at the school was also Javier Cazares whose 10-year-old daughter, Jacklyn, was killed by the teenage shooter.
As the grieving father told Associated Press, he proposed the idea of storming the elementary school to other parents after the police refused to take action.
“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to. More could have been done. They were unprepared,” Cazares said.
Backing the parents’ allegations against the police is also a shocking video showing a distressed parent getting pinned to the ground.
Following public outrage, Victor Escalon of the Texas Department of Public Safety explained that the parents’ allegations have yet to be verified.
Meanwhile, Steve McCraw, the director of the Department of Public Safety, insisted that the law enforcement engaged immediately.
“The bottom line is law enforcement was there. They did engage immediately. They did contain (Ramos) in the classroom,” he said.
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