Officers Tried to Negotiate With Uvalde Shooter While He Was Barricaded in School With Children, Officials Say

At a press briefing on Thursday, an official from the Texas Department of Public Safety told reporters that officers tried to negotiate with the man who killed 14 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday before he was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent.

Eighteen-year-old Salvador Ramos barricaded himself in a classroom full of children and fired rounds at police whenever they tried to approach him, said Victor Escalon, South Texas regional director of the Department of Public Safety.

The first officers who entered the building were fired up, he said. “They don’t make entry initially because of the gunfire they’re receiving, but we have officers calling for additional resources, anybody that’s in the initial area: tactical teams, we need equipment, we need specialty equipment, we need body armor. We need precision riflemen [and] negotiators. So during this time that they’re making those calls to bring in help—to solve this problem and stop it immediately—they’re also evacuating personnel. When I say personnel, students, teachers. There’s a lot going on. A complex situation.”

Related: Timeline Shifts AGAIN in Uvalde School Shooting

At some point, negotiators were trying to reach the shooter. Escalon said police “were taking gunfire, [conducting] negotiations, and developing a team to make entry to stop him.”

“During negotiations, there wasn’t much gunfire other than trying to keep the officers at bay,” said Escalon. Asked by reporters whether negotiators were able to make contact with Ramos, Escalon replied, “right now, according to information, he did not respond.”

There are many unanswered questions about the murderous attack on the school, including what exactly transpired in the nearly two hours between the time Ramos entered the building and the time he was shot by a Border Patrol agent.

Escalon told reporters that “there’s a lot of information, a lot of moving parts” to the investigation. “We want to know what happened, recreate the scene. That takes days, that takes hours, that takes time.”