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Armed officer spotted shooter outside Uvalde school but waited for supervisor OK to shoot, report

The report from Texas State University is one of several detailing the ways in which police did not take live-saving measures during the late May massacre.

Published: July 7, 2022 7:28am

Updated: July 7, 2022 8:05am

A police officer with a rifle watched as the teenage gunman approach the Uvalde elementary school but did not fire his weapon as he waited for permission from a supervisor to shoot, according to a new report about the tactical response to the May 24 mass shooting.

In addition, some of the 21 victims, 19 of which were children, potentially "could have been saved" had they received swifter medical attention, according to the report released Wednesday by a training center at Texas State University for active-shooter situations.

The shooting victims didn't get immediate emergency medical attention because police waited for over an hour before breaching the fourth-grade classroom to stop the shooter.

The report is another indicator of how police failed act in ways that could have saved lives during the deadliest school shooting since 26 people were killed in December 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut.

"A reasonable officer would have considered this an active situation and devised a plan to address the suspect," read the report about Uvalde massacre, which was published by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training program at TSU.

Other findings of the 26-page report include confirmation that no officer waiting in the hallway during the shooting ever tested the classroom door to see whether it was locked, and that once the officers entered the classroom at roughly 12:50 p.m., they were no better equipped to confront the gunman than they had been an hour prior, when the shooting began.

The report is one of multiple reports that have come out or are in development in the aftermath of one of the worst school shooting in Texas's history. 

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