Beware of imagining you know more than you do about the Uvalde school shooting
I was going to write a huge post on this issue today, but I got busy with other things and decided to postpone it till tomorrow.
But here’s a piece of information (hat tip: commenter “Kate”) that was revealed today that demonstrates one point I was going to make in that post: that the “fog of war” is still heavily operating. Even facts which we think we know for sure about the incident turn out to have been wrong. And there probably will be more revisions and then more revisions before a full report comes out.
Some people will consider these changes CYA lying. And perhaps there is some of that – if so, it wouldn’t be unheard of. But my guess is that a lot of it is simply that piecing together the truth, from hundreds and perhaps even thousands of interviews and videos and recordings, takes time and there are many reversals along the way as more information gets uncovered.
Case in point: the teacher who left the school door propped open. That story, which was reported just about everywhere quite early and didn’t waver (till now), turns out to be only half true, according to recently reviewed video:
Investigators initially said the teacher had propped the door open before Salvador Ramos, 18, entered the school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24. Investigators have now determined that the teacher, who has not been identified, propped the door open with a rock, but then removed the rock and closed the door when she realized there was a shooter on campus, said Travis Considine, chief communications officer for the Texas Department of Public Safety. But, Considine said, the door did not lock.
Investigators confirmed the detail through additional video footage reviewed since the Friday news conference when it was first stated the door had been left propped open. Authorities did not state at that time what had been used to prop open the door.
Now the question is: why didn’t that door lock? It’s apparently supposed to lock automatically. It’s probably just one of those awful situations in which maintenance wasn’t completely on the ball, or someone had unlocked it at some time in the past, and then in a crisis the error is revealed.
Horrible. But at least the teacher needn’t feel quite the level of guilt that I was previously imagining she (I’d heard it was a she, but who knows at this point?) would be feeling. However, she’s probably feeling very guilty about not having double-checked to see whether the door actually locked behind her. My guess is that she was probably shaking with fear and in a mental state of panic, however, eager to get inside as fast as possible, and that she just made what she thought was a valid assumption about that door lock.
That was my first thought, Neo, about the mental torture the teacher must be enduring if she HAD left the door propped open. I don’t see how she could have checked to see if it was locked from the inside. Presumably it’s an emergency exit; if you push from inside, it opens. Sadly, in this case, it didn’t lock from the outside.
Kate:
Yes, a door that locks automatically from the outside usually opens automatically from the inside. However, sometimes there’s some sort of way to check by looking at the lock mechanism. Often there isn’t, though, and if it’s supposed to lock one would assume it had done so.
Horrible mess – and some of it is just chance/accidents that favored the shooter, such as this door-locking mess. That includes the fact that the school officer, first on the scene, didn’t see the shooter although he was nearby, because he was hiding behind a car and not shooting yet.
We don’t even know about the door’s function. I do some business in a warehouse which has two personnel doors. One will open from the inside if the bar across it at waist height is shoved. One, looking the same, will open no matter where you push it, bar or not. Neither will open from the outside if pulled while locked.
So both have a lock which functions, at least partly, and likely the same model number.
But they work differently and one differently from the sales brochure.
Likely, the door in question would lock itself if swinging back from fully open but the impact from having been pushed, say, a foot open to get the rock was inadequate to trigger the lock.
Someone not panicked might have had the thought to pull on the door to make sure. But if the door opens outward, is there a fitting of some sort on the inside which would allow a pull grip?
I’m confused about the cops going in or not.
There are reports that cops were in the building evacuating kids and staff from other classrooms and other areas of the building. So these guys went in.
And there were cops facing what is, at this point, a door practically of armor, opening outward. So, whatever the delay in getting the door open, the guys facing the door had gone in.
Am I missing something?
I’m trying not to do the displacement I mentioned some days back, but it’s tough.
Thanks Kate and neo.
Before assuming the worst about people who are in a crisis situation, try to remember that Murphy and chaos are part of the crisis.
IIRC it takes repeated realistic training to ensure that people in life or death crisis situations make correct decisions. For example in the military, how to respond when your squad in an ambush, or when your ship is on fire, or your submarine has run into the bottom at 25 knots.
It’s not just doing one active shooter drill and done, Geoffrey.
What we “know.”
Richard Aubrey:
I read that the children in other rooms were rescued through windows, or at least mostly through windows.
But let’s say that you are correct and many or maybe even most were rescued through doors. It’s certainly possible; there are so many conflicting and/or incomplete stories.
The school was on lockdown. The perp entered the classrooms in which he killed children because those doors hadn’t been locked yet. Other teachers had time to lock their doors, and did. The doors apparently were very strong steel doors. The shooter locked the doors of the two classrooms he was in, from the inside. The teachers had locked the other classrooms from the inside. The shooter of course was not going to be unlocking the doors for the police. But the teachers in the other rooms, if convinced that it was really the police at the doors to rescue them, would freely open them and let them in (I’m not sure how the rescuers’ police identity could be conveyed, but in a smallish town maybe people actually knew some of the rescuers – or perhaps they were able to call police to ascertain the rescuers actually were police.)
I certainly haven’t read anything indicating the police ever broke down one of the doors. The first use of a key to open a door was the door behind which the perp was.
neo:
I do admire your willingness to collect data and hold fire until the facts solidify. It’s a rare gift on the Planet of the Apes, my operating political metaphor.
Again, a favorite quote:
_________________________
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself,
and you are the easiest person to fool.
–Richard Feynman
_________________________
Which reminds me as well of my favorite GK Chesterton story:
_________________________
QUESTION: Is it true that The Times once sent out an inquiry to famous authors, asking the question, “What’s wrong with the world today?” and Chesterton responded simply,
“Dear Sir,
I am.
Yours, G.K. Chesterton.”
https://www.chesterton.org/wrong-with-world/
_________________________
Me too.
Why didn’t the door lock?
In Kate’s PBS article the teacher claims to have removed the propping rock and pulled the door closed. Often such doors have damped door closer arms.
Possibly, she pulled against the stiff resistance of the damped arm for a second and ran. And the door closer didn’t get it closed. Sometimes a little wind or positive air pressure inside the building will prevent the full closing. Maybe she just said that she pulled the door closed, but only kicked out the rock.
If there is no door closer, maybe she slammed the door hard and it bounced off the jam quickly enough that it did not latch. That would be an understandable mistake assuming it’s possible.
Or the door was just completely unlocked for some reason. The rock certainly suggests that she expected it to be locked.
huxley:
Thank you!
But my “willingness to hold fire until the facts solidify” sure doesn’t act as clickbait, compared to the rabble-rousers.
However, we all must be true to our natures, and this is mine. It sometimes drives people who know me a bit crazy.
huxley,
Great Feynman quote. In my experiences with sorting out puzzles you have to consider all the possibilities and then re-consider the possibilities you like the least. Because you probably gave those short shrift.
… or perhaps they were able to call police to ascertain the rescuers actually were police.
It’s not uncommon for 911 operators to intermediate between the caller and the police radio. So the operator might tell the caller that the police are outside door #183 right now, for example. Usually the operator tells callers, “Don’t hang up.” Although often, the caller needs to hang up to hide the phone.
My thoughts have never centered upon how the killer got in. Glad to learn that the teacher made an understandable assumption. IMO, she bears no responsibility for the unlocked door, I’ve had that happen myself with the type of door mechanisms motels often use.
I’m strictly concerned with what the local police did and did not do.
“Before assuming the worst about people who are in a crisis situation, try to remember that Murphy and chaos are part of the crisis.”
Were there much chaos I’d agree but there is little chaos in standing in front of a door with over a dozen other cops for 30-60 minutes.
Had the janitor been away from the school, the cops would have already mentioned that extenuating circumstance for why they didn’t quickly have the key. So he was nearby enough for him to be reached for the key once they radioed the need for it.
We know there were three avenues of attack regardless of which room he was in and we know that other cops could quickly glance through the outer windows and radio the position of the killer.
We know that children were dying while the cops followed orders. We know that it was 30min. to an hour before the Border Patrol Swat team disobeyed orders in an attack through just one vector.
Nor are multiple active shooter drills needed to get at least some things right. Pray tell, name just one thing the local cops did that lessened the death toll in those two rooms?
The only kids that survived were ones that hid, pretended to be dead or perhaps were unconscious and appeared to be dead. I have yet to learn of how the local cops actions saved even one life in that room.
These things we know because they don’t rely upon particulars that might change the basics of the cop’s actions.
If the door was NOT in fact still propped open when the shooter came by, then how did he know that it was unlocked? Was he trying all the doors as he passed them, on the off-chance one was usable? That seems like a good way for him to get shot by the police who were gathering outside by then.
I never did like the speculations that the teacher left the door propped out of either panic or design, but didn’t see any other easy way for Ramos to know he could get access to the school right there.
At least there was an answer to why the teacher went outside to start with, apparently BEFORE anything was going on across the street.
(Neo’s linked post)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/texas-police-say-uvalde-school-teacher-closed-propped-open-door-before-attack-but-it-didnt-lock
The 72-hour-rule is now going on 7 days.
AesopFan:
If the teacher saw the shooter and closed the door, he might have seen her do it, and therefore tried that door first.
Or he may have tried all the doors. Not sure how many the school had. I believe he did have time to try them, because police didn’t get to the school for a few mintes.
Or just by chance he may have tried that door first.
If the door was NOT in fact still propped open when the shooter came by, then how did he know that it was unlocked?
My understanding is that the events were unfolding so fast, that the perp may have seen the teacher remove the rock and go inside. So give the door a try. It’s also possible that the perp knew from his grandmother that this door was often unlocked.
Sorry about crossed comments Neo. I’ll leave it.
Geoffrey Britain:
You are assuming facts not in evidence again – or rather, still.
The Border Patrol officer who was at the scene says it was chaos. Nor has there been any official word on whether the officers inside the building were “standing in front of a door with over a dozen other cops for 30-60 minutes.” The only people asserting that at the moment are you, many other commenters, and many pundits. I have yet to see a link from you to the source. I have said that many times and you ignore what I’m saying. Give me a link and I’ll take a look.
Engaging with you on this is becoming a waste of time.
You also write, “Had the janitor been away from the school, the cops would have already mentioned that extenuating circumstance for why they didn’t quickly have the key. ” That’s one of your silliest assertions. Very often important facts like that are left out and don’t come out till later. It can be that investigations are disorganized, and/or spokesmen are not all that clear or articulate, and/or time is limited and/or reporters don’t ask the right questions, and/or it takes a while to interview everyone involved and get the story straight, etc..
Or perhaps the janitor was standing right in front of them and saying, “Here’s the key, please take it!” and they told him to go blow.
We don’t know. You don’t know.
The janitor could have been in hiding too. Heard the shooting and dived for cover, afraid to come out. As Neo has said, we just don’t know.
Can we trust the Feds to do a good job of finding out what really happened? I just do not know, nor do I trust them anymore.
Geoffrey Britain:
From that same comment of yours–
“other cops could quickly glance through the outer windows and radio the position of the killer…”
Oh, really? First of all, no reports of that happening. So I guess no cop – including those with kids in there – cared enough to do that simple thing that Geoffrey Britain thought of doing.
However, I can think of a few reasons they might not have done it. Perhaps they tried and he shot at them and they couldn’t get close enough. Perhaps they tried – even with binoculars or other scopes – and he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was crouched down or behind tables or chairs. Perhaps he was in a closet. Are you aware that when the police finally entered, he was in a closet? That is what occurred, according to reports.
You also write, “We know that children were dying while the cops followed orders.”
We know that children were dying before the cops got in, and we can assume also after. But as I’ve said countless times now, we don’t know what the cops were doing to get in or what their orders actually were. In fact, I read a quote from a police officer who was there who said there were no orders to stand down. I read another report from another someone who was there – I believe it was a Border Patrol member – who said no one seemed to be in control and giving orders, at least they couldn’t find who was in control.
You also wrote, “We know that it was 30min. to an hour before the Border Patrol Swat team disobeyed orders in an attack through just one vector.” No, we don’t. I read that somewhere – who said it? Give a link. Because I’ve also read the opposite. I have read a ton of contradictory reports. You seem to think you are more than capable of sorting them out, and yet you have yet to give a single link so we can examine more closely the source on which you base your information.
You write, “Pray tell, name just one thing the local cops did that lessened the death toll in those two rooms?” Answer: we don’t even know how many LOCAL COPS were there versus other cops. We don’t know what the local cops did, what equipment they had, what they delegated to other cops, what they could have and should have done and didn’t do, and countless other things. Every indication is that the majority of the kids died before the cops even got on the scene. But the first on the scene were local cops, who engaged the killer. If they hadn’t been there at all, he might have left the room and gone into other rooms. Or, if the local cops that were there at first before the other cops came had kept engaging him, he might have killed them (there were only 2 or 3 there at first) and emerged from the room and gotten into other rooms somehow (we don’t know exactly when each room managed to lock down, or when he was finished killing the kids he was killing in the two rooms where he was). If he killed the first few cops, he might have escaped from the school building and gone on to kill other people. Once the local cops arrived, it seems he stopped shooting inside the classrooms, so perhaps the fact that they were there and he knew it caused him to stop killing kids and start trying to fire at cops. At any rate, we simply don’t know the details and the details are extremely important.
You also write, “The only kids that survived were ones that hid, pretended to be dead or perhaps were unconscious and appeared to be dead.” No, we don’t know that. It’s possible, but I’ve seen stories that contradict that. For example, the girl who smeared herself with blood in order to play dead never really did play dead because she said he never came back into her room after she did that. So, why wasn’t she shot the first time, when he was in her room and shooting kids? She was uninjured at that point and does not say that she was playing dead or hiding.
I would very much like to see an article that explains why all the survivors survived. It’s possible they were all injured, hiding, or played dead. But we don’t know because no such piece has been written. Once again, if you’ve seen such an article, give the link. Till then, you are merely speculating.
After the reams of misinformation in the reporting of Rittenhouse and Breonna Taylor it’s pretty much a really good idea not to take a position on anything the news reports for at least a couple of weeks.
Earlier reports said it took 40 minutes to get the classroom key from the janitor, for whatever (if anything) that is worth.
“San Antonio attorney Don Flanery told the San Antonio Express-News that the Robb Elementary School employee, whom he’s not naming, closed the door shut after realizing that a gunman was on the loose….’She remembers pulling the door closed while telling 911 that he was shooting. She thought the door would lock because that door is always supposed to be locked.'[Flanery said]”
Flanary told the newspaper that the employee had initially propped open the door to carry food from a car to the classroom.
Is Don Flanery the teacher’s lawyer?
My spidey-sense has been tingling about this event happening in Texas a few days before the NRA convention in Texas.
If there is a coverup, who knows when or if we will get the true story?
Also, the Columbine shooting occurred a few days before the 1999 NRA convention in Denver.
If the teacher had to prop the door open to come back in then that probably means that the door was not meant to be an entrance. Proper procedure probably (definitely speculation based on personal experience and not based on any news reports about this school) was to go around to the front of the school to come back in – showing a badge or proper ID. Propping the door open was probably a way to save time.
@ Neo & TommyJay > “If the teacher saw the shooter and closed the door, he might have seen her do it, and therefore tried that door first.”
That occurred to me later.
We will never know since the perp is dead, unless there is some kind of video that hasn’t been published (or found) yet.
The “Why didn’t they look through the windows” question has some issues. First, what is the physical location of the windows in the outer wall? If they’re high up on the wall, seeing in is more difficult. Second, commercial window installations are usually about seeing out, rather than about seeing in. Third, in daytime, it’s usually hard to see in unless one is right on the window, but it’s easy to see out. The reverse is true at night.
Is the path to the window such that the killer could easily see someone approach?
Now you’re at the window. Do you stick your head up into the view of the killer? You will have to do this more than once. They need to know where the killer is, not where he was two minutes ago.
Modern cell phones are pretty good at processing and livestreaming video. But if you are crouching out of sight and holding the phone to the glass, can you see the screen, to know you’re aiming properly?
Do you know how to livestream? Can you livestream to a useful destination (the team in the hallway)?
I can buy a full-color camera with its own light source to fit down my drains or up into the ceiling. The price is under $200. It’s a great tool, and would not be useful in this situation because of how it focuses. The department might have bought something that could see under a locked door or through the window, four years ago, when they didn’t work nearly so well. It might be gathering dust on a shelf because it was not useful, and no one remembered it in the hour or so they had.
If Uvalde had a SWAT team, that camera and display might be in the team van and have been trained with over time. But this is another issue: does every town need a SWAT team? Can they afford it? Do they have the budget for the equipment, and to train with it?
Mesa, AZ, is the 34th largest city in the US. They can afford a SWAT team and training. About five years ago the team responded to a report that some hotel guest had seen another hotel guest with a pistol in his room. The team flat out murdered the guy who had the pistol, in the hallway, without ever seeing the gun themselves. And here’s the thing: he was an exterminator who carried it as part of his work. Further, it’s perfectly legal for a man to have a pistol in a hotel room. The videos of it are available.
Now do we want Uvalde, with a very limited budget, to field a part-time, inadequately trained SWAT team?
}}} Some people will consider these changes CYA lying.
Don’t forget this can be exposure of CYA lying, too. Someone can be asked a question, and, thinking they were the only possible supplier of evidence, can lie to cover an error or bad decision they made (even an honest one in the face of a lack of sufficient info, peeps still like to avoid undue opprobrium due to reasonable human errors)
But an interview or observation about something made at a given point of time can affect “what is possible” even if it does not offer direct answers.
Think of the Zapruder film. It defacto locked down certain events, even without having any actual shooter(s) on the film, only the results of the shots. A large part of the conspiracy theories surrounding the event occur because of issues with the timing and the nature of how things happened. Lacking that film, the actual events would involve far more blatant speculation and stories from random people.
And this is similar, because the Zapruder film only came out well after the “official story” was detailed… so it called many of its claims into question.
}}} Yes, a door that locks automatically from the outside usually opens automatically from the inside. However, sometimes there’s some sort of way to check by looking at the lock mechanism. Often there isn’t, though, and if it’s supposed to lock one would assume it had done so.
Well, the obvious check here would almost certainly be to push against the door to verify the lock was engaged — not push on the HANDLE, but the door’s general surface. If engaged, it should refuse to open.
And, as Richard notes, if it wasn’t swung/”slammed” shut, but “allowed” to close gently (the teacher may have been attempting to be quiet, which might have been why, too), the latch may not have fully engaged.
I’d call it just another facet of a senseless tragedy, but what is the alternative, a “sensible” tragedy? (dark amusement, here, bordering on the macabre)
}}} After the reams of misinformation in the reporting of Rittenhouse and Breonna Taylor it’s pretty much a really good idea not to take a position on anything the news reports for at least a couple of weeks.
You do not ken the ways of the liberal idiot, grasshoppa…
}}} Now you’re at the window. Do you stick your head up into the view of the killer?
Not to argue against the police, but the answer to this one doesn’t need tech, nor is it overly new — you just need a mirror.
Who carries a mirror around?
Easy: “Excuse me, ma’am, do you have a compact with a mirror we could use, please?” I’m sure you could find a woman who has one within a minute or two.
As to the approach, well, I haven’t seen the layout, but if it’s like most schools, then you can get to the wall one way or another (unless they face an interior square courtyard, though that one just means go to one of the perpendicular walls away from the classroom he’s in and crawl out the window to get next to the wall… then just crawl until you’re outside the room, and stick the mirror up where you can see him, and, hopefully, he doesn’t notice you with the mirror.
In any event, he does not have a good shooting angle if he does come to the window to get at you, and if he does that, you have a sniper there ready to take him out.
Now, I don’t know about Uvalde, but there are all kinds of gadgets which can do the job of that mirror — a local mechanic almost certainly has an inspection camera, that might be able to do the job, and they DO make cameras that are designed to look under doors, etc… which it’s possible they may not have in Uvalde, but I’d suspect ANY jurisdiction with about 5000-odd people in it (e.g., the county sheriff, if not the Uvalde police) ought to have one as standard equipment in some of their cars.
They run from 18 bucks (USB-C inspection camera hooks up to your phone!) to a couple hundred.