On Friday, a source for that agency told Yahoo News that the team that responded to the shooting urged local officers to let them rush the building.
“We were told to wait. We were told to wait and wait, and the team wanted to go, but you have to understand Border Patrol is not the lead agency, so they had to wait, and now look what happened,” the Border Patrol source said.
Two CBP sources with knowledge of the Uvalde response said Texas Rangers, the lead investigators, are preventing CBP officials on scene from interviewing those involved, with one source saying, “They didn’t listen, they didn’t let us go in, and now they are changing their stories multiple times a day, and because CBP has been pushed out of the investigation, we have no idea if what they are saying is even accurate, which is terrible for everyone especially — obviously — the families.”
The timeline of events has changed repeatedly in the week since the shooting, with a patchwork of officials contradicting each other and themselves. San Antonio Express-News and other outlets reported Tuesday that a teacher did not leave the door the gunman entered the school through propped open as law enforcement initially said, including at McCraw’s briefing on Friday.
“She remembers pulling the door closed while telling 911 that he was shooting,” Don Flanary, the teacher’s lawyer, told the Express-News. “She thought the door would lock because that door is always supposed to be locked.”
The Department of Public Safety later said it was able to confirm the teacher’s account. Previously, officials said that the shooter was wearing body armor (he was not) and that a school district police officer had “engaged” the shooter before he entered the school (they now say the officer drove by and didn’t see the shooter). After initially praising first responders for their quick action, Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday that information he had been given about the shooting “turned out, in part, to be inaccurate” and a full investigation into what had happened was taking place.
The Justice Department announced Sunday that it would investigate the police response to the school shooting and publish its findings.