‘I don’t want to die,’ student tells 911 dispatcher at Uvalde school amid mass shooting

DALLAS (AP) — As law enforcement officers stood outside Khloie Torres’ fourth-grade classroom in Uvalde, Texas, she pleaded for help in a series of 911 calls, whispering into the phone that there were “a lot” of bodies and telling the operator: “Please, I don’t want to die. My teacher is dead. Oh my God.”

At one point the dispatcher asks Khloie if there are more people in the room with her.

“No, it’s just me and a few friends. A lot of people,” he says, pausing briefly, “have left.”

Khloie’s and others’ phone calls, as well as body-worn camera and surveillance footage from the May 24, 2022, shooting at Robb Elementary School, were added to a vast trove of audio and video recordings that Uvalde city officials made public Saturday after a lengthy legal battle.

The Associated Press and other news organizations sued after officials initially refused to publicly release the information. The massacre, in which 19 students and two teachers died, was one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.

The delayed law enforcement response to the shooting was widely condemned as a colossal failure: Nearly 400 officers waited more than 70 minutes before confronting the shooter in a classroom full of dead and wounded children and teachers. Families of the victims have long demanded accountability for the slow police response in the South Texas city of about 15,000, 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of San Antonio.

Among those killed was Brett Cross’s 10-year-old nephew, Uziyah Garcia. Cross, who raised the boy as a son, was furious that relatives were not informed that the documents would be released and that it took so long for them to be made public.

“If we thought we could get everything we wanted, we would ask for a time machine to go back in time… and save our children, but we can’t, so all we ask for is justice, accountability and transparency, and they refuse to give it to us,” he said.

Jesse Rizo, whose 9-year-old niece Jacklyn Cazares was killed in the shooting, said Saturday’s revelation reignited anger because it showed law enforcement “waiting and waiting and waiting.”

“If they had broken in earlier, they might have saved a few lives, including my niece’s,” he said.

The police response included nearly 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 91 state police officers, as well as school and city police. While terrified students and teachers called 911 from classrooms, dozens of officers stood in the hallway, trying to figure out what to do. Desperate parents who had gathered outside the building pleaded with them to come inside.

The shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, entered the school at 11:33 a.m., first opening fire from a hallway and then entering two adjacent fourth-grade classrooms. The first officers arrived at the school minutes later. They approached the classrooms but withdrew when Ramos opened fire.

At 12:06 p.m., most of the Uvalde Police Department’s radio traffic was still focused on establishing a perimeter around the school and controlling traffic in the area, as well as the logistics of tracking down those who had safely evacuated the building. They were having trouble setting up a command post, as one officer told his colleagues, “because we need bodies to hold off the parents.”

“They’re trying to squeeze in,” he says.

At 12:16 p.m., someone from the Texas Department of Public Safety, a state law enforcement agency, called police to say a SWAT team was on its way from Austin, about 162 miles (100 kilometers) away. She asked for any information police could provide about the shooting, the suspect and the police response.

“Do you have a command post? Or where do you want our officers to go?” the caller asks.

A police official said officers know there are several dead students at the elementary school, and others are still hiding. Some survivors have been evacuated to a nearby building. She did not know if a command post had been set up.

At 12:50 p.m., a tactical unit enters one of the classrooms and fatally shoots Ramos.

Among the criticisms in a US Justice Department report released earlier this year was that there was no “urgent need” for the command centre, causing confusion among police over who was responsible.

Multiple federal and state investigations have uncovered cascading problems in law enforcement training, communications, leadership, and technology, and have questioned whether officers put their own lives above those of children and teachers.

Some of the published 911 calls were from terrified instructors. One described “lots and lots of gunshots,” while another sobbed into the phone as the dispatcher urged her to remain quiet. “Quick, quick, quick, quick!” the first teacher shouted before hanging up.

Just before arriving at the school, Ramos shot and wounded the grandmother in her home. He then took a pickup truck from the home and drove to the school.

Ramos’ distraught uncle made several calls to 911, asking to be connected so he could try to get his nephew to stop shooting.

“Everything I tell him, he listens to me,” Armando Ramos said. “Maybe he could back down or do something to turn himself in,” he added, his voice breaking.

He said his nephew, who had been at his house the previous night, stayed in his bedroom with him all night and told him he was upset because his grandmother was “harassing” him.

“Oh my God, please, please don’t do anything stupid,” the man says on the phone. “I think he’s shooting kids.”

But the offer came too late, just after the shooting had ended and Salvador Ramos had been killed by law enforcement officers.

Two of the responding officers now face criminal charges. Former Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo and former school resource officer Adrian Gonzales have pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of child abandonment and child endangerment. A Texas state trooper in Uvalde who had been suspended was reinstated earlier this month.

In an interview with CNN this week, Arredondo said he felt he had been made a “scapegoat” and should be blamed for the failed law enforcement response.

Some families have called for more officers to be charged and have filed federal and state lawsuits against law enforcement, social media, online gaming companies and the gun manufacturer that made the rifle the attacker used.

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Associated Press writers Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, Jim Vertuno in Austin, David Fischer in Miami, Gabe Stern in Reno, Nevada, and Michael Balsamo and Julie Walker in New York contributed to this report.

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