Border Patrol agents defied orders, stormed in to kill gunman after local cops wouldn’t act, details revealed

As an official timeline coalesces in tandem with relayed instructions on scene outside the Texas elementary school Tuesday, federal officers are now detailing how they had defied orders considered to be the “wrong decision.”

When the 18-year-old suspect first arrived at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX at 11:28 a.m., responders from various law enforcement agencies in the surrounding area answered the call. As previously reported, members of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) border patrol tactical unit BORTAC were delayed in entering the building after being told the situation had “transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject.”

That call was made by Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District chief of police Pete Arredondo who further instructed officers on the scene to delay entry into the building and await backup and tactical equipment.

Now, two senior federal law enforcement officers told NBC News that after 30 minutes of heeding Arredondo’s instructions, they would no longer wait.

Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Steven McCraw had explained, “The on-scene commander at that time believed it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject. Obviously, based upon the information we have, children in that classroom were at risk and it was in fact still an active shooter… It was the wrong decision. Period.”

The BORTAC team allowed roughly 30 minutes to go by before making the decision to defy Arredondo, enter the building, and form up in the hallway outside the classroom where the suspect was said to have been barricaded in. When the classroom was breached, an official from CBP explained to The Washington Post that the suspect stepped out of a closet and began firing at the agents who returned fire and eliminated the threat.

McCraw went on to tell NBC News, “From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course, it was not the right decision. It was a wrong decision. Period. There was no excuse for that. There were plenty of officers to do what needed to be done, with one exception, is that the incident commander inside believed he needed more equipment and more officers to do a tactical breach at that time.”

In the wake of the murder of 19 children and two teachers, the inaction of Arredondo was further criticized when Texas DPS Lt. Chris Olivarez defended the delay over concerns for the safety of the officers. Olivarez had said, “At that point, if they proceeded any further not knowing where the suspect was at, they could have been shot, they could have been killed, and at that point that gunman would have had an opportunity to kill other people inside that school.”

As one official went on to explain to The Washington Post of reaction from officers, “They have not told me they were frustrated. But they told me it was hard to discern who was in charge.”

Texas Monthly reported:

The agents immediately responded, arriving at the school just before noon. Bortac (Border Patrol Tactical Unit) is CBP’s’s paramilitary force, an elite group of agents trained to exchange gunfire with cartels. Border Patrol agents not in the SWAT unit also rushed to the school, for more personal reasons: their own children were in the building.

[…]

According to the CBP official, three Bortac agents engaged the shooter in gunfire — with one holding a shield — after entering Robb Elementary along with local and state law-enforcement officers. One Bortac agent was wounded, but not critically. The CBP official told Texas Monthly that it’s “unclear which bullet from which gun” struck the shooter and killed him.

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22 thoughts on “Border Patrol agents defied orders, stormed in to kill gunman after local cops wouldn’t act, details revealed

  1. A mother gets into the school, gets back out with her children. The shooter never sees her. So what excuse do the police have for not rescuing the children. Plus the police are armed.
    The police are trained for this type of action. Again, what is their excuse

    1. Spunky mother, more like her are needed, especially in the Uvalde PD, BTW are you sure about the training????

  2. For the life of me I cannot understand why the police officers would not storm the building when they KNEW the children were not safe. PERIOD. I don’t care whether he was barricaded or not, or whatever they thought was going on. I just can’t understand it. My brain wants to explode every time I think about what they let happen.

  3. I hope every school and law enforcement agency in the nation thinks this through now so they do the right thing the next time this thing tries to happen. Single point of entry for all schools. Armed guard always. If a threat gains entry no delay in neutralizing them. Even if it is a “barricaded subject“, as long as law enforcement delays the shooter can do more damage, and there would be less chance of survival of anyone they have already shot.

  4. I am not going to call the police who stood by cowards but if you put on the uniform and badge and draw the pay there are extreme situations like this where “officer safety” is secondary to the lives of the people you are sworn to protect. There comes a time when when acting against orders takes second place to doing what needs doing.
    I would like to think all of these officers if given the order to go in would have but they let bad orders take precedence over doing the right thing.

  5. Oh now I understand why the wait. The officers were afraid that they might get shot. No the officers were all COWARDS! These useless guys chose the wrong profession and should have been screened out in the hiring process. Real cops go in to save lives at risk of being injured. National policy is to go in immediately on school shooters to save the children. Anything less warrants criminal action for dereliction of duty for cowardliness. They let wounded children bleed to death for 45 minutes!

    1. The officers did not do their JOB! Just like Parkland. If you’re looking for a reason why we have the problem we have look no further. You either take you police job seriously and run in the direction of gunfire or take yourself and your uniform home and don’t come back.

  6. This ahooter was claimed to be a leftist symp & to hate America. So he was either a Muslim or a suicide by cop. Muslims have only one sure way to paradise in their tradituon: be killed while killing as many infidels as possible. There is no provision for women to enter Muzzy paradise. There is no report of the shooter yelling alahuakbbar which is mandatory for a muzzy. So either there is a ban on reporting that someone has yelled alahhuakbar while killing or he wasn’t Islamist. If the msm fails to continue reporting on this horror it’s likely it was a muzzy but could but definitely a leftist.

  7. Why has nobody said if while waiting the BP officers could hear shots being fired. Or was all the childeren in the room dead already and the perp was in the closet?

    1. The children were bleeding to death while there were no shots being fired.
      EMT were not going in to save these kids until the police cleared the area.
      The Problem was- the cowards were eating donuts and coffee at their police cars.

  8. DemoRATS have dumbed us down to a Clockwork Orange society, inmates are running the asylum.

    THROW THE BUMS OUT IN NOVEMBER! INTERCEPT THE SEWER RAT VOTE HARVESTERS!

  9. I van’t anything to the following statements made by others except, they are right on the money. The Dems are killing any and all opposition.

  10. Playing politics with lives on the line and every second counts. The wrong outcome and your career is justifiably over.

  11. Since Sandy Hook…..that was 2012-13…..I was PLEADING on blog sites like this…..why isn’t there uniformly-controlled-access to schools like we have for ANY Federal or State government building? A single point-of-entry with a guard house you need to pass through first, and then metal detection screening in the lobby? Is that so hard? . It needn’t look militaristic….just sensible. But NO…..the COST they say….so it seems protecting govt employees at Federal and State buildings is more important. Is that what I’m hearing? Then this point for those who don’t believe in personal self-defense….remember these words…”when seconds count, the police are only a few minutes away”

  12. So Arredondo is the stupid know-it-all who may have contributed to so many children’s deaths. The police had guns and bullet proof vests. The children didn’t. They had nothing, not even any adults with some common sense.

  13. I said from the beginning the story on the border patrol agent who is also a homeland security elite squad, was there and just happened to hear a shooting going on? This is a typical Manchurian candidate style it to create a false flag to grab the American guns once more. If you think these people have any problem killing kids forget it they don’t have a problem killing 1000 babies a day all the way up in two out of the room so why would you think they would care anything about these children and besides that most of these elites most of these at least they work for our child traffickers for sex! Sound like a Manchurian candidate style hit to get an air and kill the shooter. This guy had to be supplied with the guns and the ammo because he didn’t make enough money to buy those kinds of weapons, is on the picture they look new ,The weapons are very expensive.Think about it people another red flag to distract the American people and use the narrative to go after or promote their agenda of gun grab nut gun laws that we have illegally on the books for the constitution come Which all failed! Open your eyesAmerica this was not a coincidence, was is it?

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