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Official: It Was "Wrong Decision" Not To Breach Classroom Door; Questions Mount Over How Gunman Got Into School, Was Barricaded Inside For An Hour Before Being Killed; Rep. Nicole Collier (D-TX) Discusses About Her Thoughts On The Press Conference Made About The Police Response In Robb Elementary School Shooting; 10-Year-Old Survivor: "Almost All" Of My Friends Died In Shooting. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 27, 2022 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[15:01:14]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Victor Blackwell.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: And I'm Alisyn Camerota.

There was a gut-wrenching admission today from Texas officials about the police response to the massacre of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde.

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COL. STEVEN MCCRAW, DIRECTOR, TEXAS DEPT. OF PUBLIC SAFETY: For the benefit of hindsight, where I'm sitting now, that of course it was not the right decision, it was the wrong decision, period. There's no excuse for that. But again, I wasn't there, but I'm just telling you from what we know that we believe there should have been an entry at that as soon as you can. Hey, when there's an active shooter, the rules change. It's no longer, okay, it's no longer a barricaded subject. You don't have time. You don't worry about perimeters.

And by the way, Texas embraces active shooter training, active shooter certification and that that doctrine requires officers, we don't care what agency you're from, you don't have to have a leader on the scene, every officer lines up, stacks up, goes and finds where those rounds are being fired and keep shooting until the subject is dead, period.

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BLACKWELL: We've been asking for days for the timeline and finally this afternoon we got it. Two minutes after the shooter entered the school, three officers follow that suspect inside the building. But law enforcement did not go into the classroom where the gunman was until 78 minutes after the shooter entered the building.

CAMEROTA: CNN's Shimon Prokupecz is in Uvalde as he has been for days asking these questions. So Shimon, I mean, what was revealed today, it was devastating because it's - I mean, even the Director of Public Safety there looked devastated and had so much regret that they made so many mistakes.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME & JUSTICE REPORTER: Right. And he said he wasn't the commander on scene, the incident commander. The incident commander being the police chief of this small - the police department that's assigned to the school, about four officers, a security guard, that's all that's assigned to this school resource police department.

We got a bigger timeline as well from the Director of the Department of Public Safety. He went into some more detail about that morning and how the events here unfolded. As you said, this all started around 11:30 in the morning, at 11:27 am. They have video, surveillance video at the school that shows a teacher leaving the door open, she propped and opened exterior door.

That's - this is the door that the gunman ultimately used to get in. They then say about a minute later, the suspect crashes his car and then at 11:30, they get their first phone call saying that the suspect, after the car crash, and then the suspect is seen walking and exiting this car. He's seen with the gun.

This is all captured on video and then minutes later, shots fired. At 11:31, the first shots were fired. Police saying it was towards the school. And that is when the resource officer arrives. But the resource officer does not see the gunman. He's hiding in between cars. And so that then allows the government to enter the school at 11:33 and that's when he begins to shoot inside the school and then minutes later, police officers, three police officers enter the school.

So clearly we're getting a bigger timeline here, and then the police here start to ask for help. They call in other officials. They start to call border patrol. They start to call other officials. And by then, 19, as many as 19 law enforcement officials are in the hallway where the gunfire is coming from. That is what we're told. And then a girl in room 112 calls 911 and then at 12:10 the same girl calls back saying multiple people were dead and then around 12:15 is one of the tactical teams arrived for border patrol.

[15:05:06]

The police saying basically that's what they were waiting for before they were going to go inside that room, that classroom. And then at 12:36, as you see there, a girl in one room, one child calls and says he shot the door and then at 12:50 is when police say the government is ultimately taken out and law enforcement reaches the door.

We now know why they waited. The police are telling us that they were treating this as a barricaded situation that - meaning that this was not someone who was putting anyone's lives in danger, but his own and law enforcement. That's clearly not the case. Children inside were calling 911. There were gunshots being fired and now we need to figure out why that happened.

BLACKWELL: Shimon, you mentioned this - the school resource officer who has been at the center of the inconsistencies over the last several days did not go after the shooter but he went after someone though, who was it? PROKUPECZ: So it was someone who he thought was the gunman it was

some - a neighbor. The police describe that. Take a listen.

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MCCRAW: That officer was not on scene, not on campus, but had heard the 911 call with a man with a gun, drove immediately to the area, sped to what he thought was the man with a gun to the back of the school, would turn out to be a teacher, and not the suspect. And doing so he drove right by the suspect who was hunkered down behind the vehicle where he began shooting at the school.

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PROKUPECZ: And so now, there will be calls for independent investigation because right now this DPS with the Texas Rangers are leading this investigation. But what exactly happened here inside that hallway with those 19 officers who didn't storm that classroom, a decision that police say was made by the school's police chief, that needs to be answered. Why did he make this decision and certainly families are going to need to know that. And obviously law enforcement all across the country is having those same questions.

BLACKWELL: Yes, Shimon Prokupecz plenty of questions still out there. Thank you so much. Let's bring in now former Baltimore Acting Police Commissioner and CNN Law Enforcement Analyst Anthony Barksdale. Commissioner, thank you for your time.

I want to start where Shimon left off here, this question of transitioning from an active shooter situation to a barricaded subject situation if you know there are people still in the room with the shooter, should there ever be - is there a scenario in which there should be a transition to a barricaded subject situation?

ANTHONY BARKSDALE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, I want to know what facts at the time that that incident commander have to justify stopping a full-on press of the shooter. I haven't heard anything that would justify moving from active shooter to hostage barricade situation. And I'm going to say this, when you've got kids vulnerable and you know that this person is firing rounds, which is going to stick in an active shooter mode and take this suspect out of the threat equation. He has to go.

And stopping like that, I just don't see how he's justified. This incident commander, this chief got to have something good. I swear, Vic, I can't even imagine what he could say, but it better be good and I don't think he (inaudible) ...

CAMEROTA: Well, I mean - Commissioner, isn't it just as plain and simple as he is the commander of a four-person or six-person school police force as Shimon just said? This isn't the Uvalde Police Department. This isn't the Sheriff's Department. This isn't the U.S. Marshals. It's not the FBI. It's not the customs and border agent, though they were all there also. And so why are they taking commands from arguably the tiniest, least equipped agency? BARKSDALE: The incident command, excuse me, the incident command

system comes from the fire fights in California in the '70s. So with a - people establishes who is in charge. So if the chief says I'm the incident commander, that - then he's in charge and every resource that falls under him has to follow what he or she says, because that's ultimately the boss at the time.

Now, Alisyn, if that incident commander is clueless and you're in a situation like that, you ignore him and go. And you face him later on and deal with it. But this was a case where they should have kept the pressure up. Kept engaged, trying to breach that door and deal with this suspect, this shooter.

[15:10:03]

Let me say this also, you don't always need a whole team to enter. Do you know that they do some of this active shooter training with one individual? One cop, if there's one cop, then you need to know how to clear room, enter a room and keep people alive. So I'm hearing a lot of excuses for this failure and - I'm sorry, I'm worked up, but ...

BLACKWELL: Yes, a lot of people are, especially the people who live in Uvalde, who have been asking for days, is there something more you could have done. Once we got the timeline, the preliminary timeline that they were 40 minutes to an hour, why didn't you go in and now we know.

Let me ask you about the timeline we have today from DPS in which they say that at 12:03, there were as many as 19 officers in the hallway and we understand that at this point, they determined this was a barricaded subject situation and they weren't going on - going in. There were no shots fired.

But at 12:21, according to Col. McCraw of DPS, the suspect fired shots again and it wasn't for another 30 minutes that they go in. Once you hear there are shots being fired, if even you thought this was a barricaded suspect situation, it now is not.

BARKSDALE: Victor, you're 100 percent correct. A hundred percent correct. You should have kept - they should have kept going, no stopping. And how do you know if things get quiet, if there's a law, maybe there's a weapon malfunction. Maybe he's trying to reload, maybe he's out of ammo and that's the time to get them. You keep going. You pour it on, you put the pressure on and you don't stop until that threat is completely incapacitated.

And let me skip being politically correct. You're going in there to kill this shooter. And those little kids deserve that on that day and they didn't get it. They didn't get it.

CAMEROTA: We hear you, Commissioner. We appreciate your passion and we understand how you feel and how so many people feel and so disappointed about what happened there, how tragic. Anthony Barksdale, thank you.

Joining me now is Democrat Nicole Collier. She's a state representative in Texas. Representative, thanks so much for being here. What were your thoughts after hearing that press conference today?

REP. NICOLE COLLIER (D-TX): Thank you, Alisyn. This is just so embarrassing. I'm angry and disappointed and what has happened with law enforcement does nothing to improve public perception or public trust in law enforcement. We've heard so many different stories about what happened, the timeline, coming from the governor himself to mislead the public on what has happened. I applaud Col. McCraw for the courage to acknowledge the failures, but what are we going to do about it?

CAMEROTA: Representative, one of the mind boggling things about your state is that the hurdles that have been put in place for women who want to get an abortion, that somehow the state legislature was able to do quite quickly in terms of set up a waiting period, force her to get an exam, force her to have to answer questions. And yet they seem incapable, the state legislature, of doing the same thing for a teenage boy who wants to get a weapon of war. I don't understand that disconnect. Why can't the state legislature act when it comes to stopping these teenage boys from getting their hands on these guns.

COLLIER: There's no political will here. People put - are putting their positions over sound policy. We tried to limit the number of sales for large capacity magazines and it failed in 2019. There have been measures that had been filed that would reduce these types of situations, these violent crimes happening.

But we need the political courage. We need people who don't care if they don't come back, but can sleep at night because they made the right decision to implement sound gun safety policy that would protect all Texans and we need to get to work to collaborate, to provide - to create a collaborative process. It's not just guns, it's also with the behavioral and mental health aspect that we need to look at.

[15:15:05]

But we need more people who would - just look at the sound policy that we need to pass.

CAMEROTA: And are you going to do that? I mean, is there an appetite for that in the state legislature?

COLLIER: Well, not right now because a lot of them have - Republicans have already dug their heels in and said that they're not looking at re-raising the age on who can purchase an assault rifle. Right now, 18-year-olds can do that in Texas and we need to raise that age, but there's no political will.

And the concern that I have is that the Governor does call a special session. We can only take up those matters that he puts on it. And right now, what they are promoting is not what we need. We do not need more arm teachers in our classrooms.

CAMEROTA: One of the things that your governor said on Wednesday was that there are more people shot, he said, every weekend in Chicago than there are schools in Texas. We need to realize that people who think maybe we can just implement tougher gun laws, it hasn't solved it in Chicago, and L.A. and New York. It disproves that thesis he said.

Actually, he's wrong. Texas is the state with the highest amount of gun deaths. Here's the graphic, Texas is number one, far and away of all of the states with gun deaths than California, Florida, Georgia, Ohio. And so it seemed as though he was casting a lot of blame in different directions, but he wasn't talking about guns in Texas changing anything.

COLLIER: You're right. It's so callous. That's a callous deflection on what you - what's really going on in Texas. In fact, we've had several, at least five mass shootings while he has been in charge. So yes, we need to really evaluate. We don't need to look anywhere else to see what their violence, what their statistics are. Let's look at us. Let's find out what we can do and not - and putting more guns in the classroom is not going to help.

We need our teachers to teach. We already paid them too little to do too much and so we cannot put this pressure on them. We need to make sure that we have the funding to provide the resources that are needed to support our schools. This Operation Lone Star that the governor has been promoting his own program with $3 billion, we could use those dollars to secure the borders of our schools to protect the life and safety of our children.

CAMEROTA: Very quickly, I only have five seconds who should be held responsible. The gunman has been killed. He obviously was responsible. Beyond that, after you - what you heard today, who should be held responsible for what happened?

COLLIER: The school resource officer needs - the chief needs to go and turn in his badge right now.

CAMEROTA: Texas State Representative Nicole Collier, thank you very much for your time.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Twenty-one crosses ...

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BLACKWELL: Stand outside Robb Elementary School, one for each of the victims killed on Tuesday.

CAMEROTA: And we're hearing from survivors who are giving chilling details about what it was like inside the school. Stay with us.

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CAMEROTA: We see all sorts of evidence of how much life was still ahead for the 19 children who were killed in Uvalde. This is fourth grader Alithia Ramirez,. In this photo her T-shirt says "Peace Out Single Digits, I'm 10." Her father told CNN affiliate, KSAT, that Alithia loved to draw and she wanted to be an artist.

At 10 years old, Maite Rodriguez already knew what she wanted, where she wanted to go to college. Her mother wrote on Facebook that Maite aspire to attend Texas A&M and become a marine biologist.

Miranda Mathis was 11 years old. A friend of the family told The Washington Post that Miranda was bright, fun and spunky. You can see this obviously in the picture. Miranda's brother, her best friend, was also in the school during the shooting.

BLACKWELL: This is Rojelio Torres, also 10. His aunt told KSAT that Rojelio was a very intelligent, hardworking and helpful person.

Layla Salazar was 11 years old. Her grandfather told CNN the family's hearts, they're shattered because of this. They remember how Layla loved to run, and dance, and film Tiktok videos.

CAMEROTA: We're also hearing from students who survived the tragedy and CNN Adrienne Broaddus brought us joins us now from Uvalde. So Adrienne, I know that you spoke with a little boy who managed to escape through a window. It's incredible just to hear his presence of mind and his grace, so tell us how he's doing.

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ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A little bit better than what he was obviously on Tuesday. We're talking about Jayden. And when I met him, I spoke with his mother first. He doesn't remember much about what happened Tuesday. He said the moment they heard gunfire, his teacher race to the door. She locked it. She told him and his classmates to hide and be quiet.

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BROADDUS (voice over): Jayden Perez is better today.

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JADEN PEREZ, SCHOOL SHOOTING SURVIVORS: Still sad about some of the - some of my friends that died.

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BROADDUS (voice over): And the 10-year-old shooting survivor says talking helps.

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PEREZ: It was very terrifying, because I never thought that was going to happen.

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BROADDUS (voice over): Inside a fourth grade classroom, the 10-year- old said he and his classmates hid near the backpacks. This photo of the class Room was taken long before the shooting.

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PEREZ: Five of us hiding there and then rest under a table, but that didn't stop one of my friends getting hurt. The shooter shot through the window and hurting my friend and my teacher like my teacher got hurt like on right her - like on - I don't know which side, but she got hit, like hit on the side and then my friend got like shot through the nose and they had - and they both had to get surgery.

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BROADDUS (voice over): Perez said an officer helped him and his classmates escaped through a window, but not before the shooter had killed his friends.

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PEREZ: Makenna, Tess, Annabell, basically almost some of them, basically almost all of them.

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BROADDUS (voice over): Jayden's pain, not physical, but emotionally paralyzing.

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PEREZ: No, because after of what happened, no.

BROADDUS (on camera): Do you ever want to go back to school?

PEREZ: I don't want to know, because I don't want anything to do with another shooting and me in the school.

BROADDUS: You're scared it might happen again?

PEREZ: Mm-hm. And I know it might happen again, probably.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROADDUS (voice over): Jason's mom, Crystal, shared these pictures taken about 90 minutes before the shooting. She's with her son at the school celebrating Jayden's honor roll achievement. His mom said waiting, not knowing was tough.

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BROADDUS (on camera): What did you tell your mom when you finally saw her?

PEREZ: I left my water bottle at school.

BROADDUS: Your water bottle. Did you hug her? PEREZ: Mm-hm. Or she hugged me first and she was like ...

BROADDUS: Was she so happy to see you.

PEREZ: Yes. And my dad and my grandma.

BROADDUS: What are your parents mean to you?

PEREZ: A lot, because they brought me into this world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROADDUS (voice over): A world where schools are also crime scenes.

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BROADDUS (on camera): Did you hear the gunfire?

PEREZ: Yes. We never know when (inaudible) lose someone close to you.

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BROADDUS (on camera): A 10-year-old now speaking like an adult reminding us all to hug our loved ones while we can because we don't know what tomorrow may bring. Jayden told me prior to Tuesday, he wanted to be a police officer when he gets older. Now he says he wants to be a surgeon so he can help people, Alisyn and Victor?

CAMEROTA: I mean, when Jayden says it will probably happen again, unfortunately, he's right.

BLACKWELL: He's right.

CAMEROTA: Adrienne, thank you very much for that conversation with him.

BLACKWELL: Well, just a few hours drive from Robb Elementary School where this massacre happened, there is a big celebration of the Second Amendment. The NRA is holding its annual meeting there in Houston.

CAMEROTA: We have a live picture of protests that are taking place outside that event.

And next we're going to speak to a former gun industry executive who says that guns and that industry have radicalized America.

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