Texas leader says Uvalde police response an ‘abject failure’

By JIM VERTUNO and JAKE BLEIBERG Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The head of the Texas Department of Public Safety says three minutes after a gunman entered a school where he slaughtered 19 elementary students and two teachers there was sufficient armed law enforcement on scene to stop the gunman.

Yet police officers armed with rifles stood and waited in a school hallway for nearly an hour while the gunman carried out the massacre.

Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, called the police response “an abject failure.”

Delays in the law enforcement response have been the focus of the federal, state and local investigation of the massacre and its aftermath.