Uvalde Teacher’s Husband and Officer Tried To Save Her but Was Disarmed, Escorted Out of School
In a Texas Senate hearing on Tuesday, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw revealed that slain Uvalde teacher Eva Mireles’ police officer husband tried to save her but was prevented from doing so.
There’s no doubt the Uvalde, Texas, shooting that occurred at Robb Elementary School on May 24 brought the world to its knees. Now, new details shared by McCraw reveal that teacher Mireles could have possibly been saved by her police officer husband, Ruben Ruiz.
Officer Ruiz was on the scene at Robb Elementary alongside other responders when he got a call from his wife saying, “She had been shot and was dying.” McCraw explained that Ruiz immediately “tried to move forward into the hallway” in order to help his wife and save her from the shooter. However, he was detained, disarmed and escorted away.
While McCraw did not share who prevented Ruiz from attempting to help Mireles, the lengthy hearing took aim at police decisions at the time of the shooting. Calling the response an “abject failure,” McCraw also seemingly pointed fingers at Pete Arredondo, Uvalde’s school district police chief.
The public safety director painted the picture of the tragic shooting, describing how, “The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering room 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.”
Making the optics for the police response even worse, footage of the scene at the time of the attack shows police officers were already inside the school 19 minutes after the gunman arrived. They also had rifles and a ballistic shield, leading many to wonder why they did not enter the classroom until almost one hour later.
Per McCraw, the “lack of leadership” and “misinformation” are to blame, adding that the subject was already contained. He continued, “Now, certainly if you heard, ‘Well, wait a minute, we’re getting 911 calls from children in the classroom.’ And we didn’t know the timeline.”
The public safety director also talked about how the officers responding to the attack had enough personnel and guns to stop the shooter “three minutes” after entering the school, and that the classroom door was actually left unlocked — but they didn’t check it.
The Uvalde shooting is already one of the most tragic events to ever occur in this country, and new information that continues to surface makes it all the more devastating.
