By Brad Brooks and Steve Gorman

LUBBOCK, Texas (Reuters) – Emergency-911 calls from kids hiding from the gunman who killed 21 folks inside a Texas elementary faculty weren’t routed to the on-scene police commander who waited practically an hour earlier than officers moved in to finish the siege, a state senator mentioned on Thursday.

Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose constituency contains Uvalde, Texas, the city 80 miles west of San Antonio the place final week’s capturing occurred, mentioned the lapse in how 911 calls have been transmitted was half of a bigger “system failure” that’s nonetheless simply coming to mild.

“We want transparency, and that hasn’t occurred right here,” Gutierrez advised a information convention 9 days after final Tuesday’s bloodbath at Robb Elementary Faculty, which ranks because the deadliest U.S. faculty capturing in a decade and follows a string of mass shootings elsewhere throughout Texas lately.

The Texas Division of Public Security (DPS) disclosed final week that as many as 19 officers from varied native regulation enforcement businesses stood outdoors the classroom occupied by the Uvalde gunman for greater than 45 minutes earlier than a U.S. Border Patrol-led tactical squad stormed in and killed the shooter.

DPS officers mentioned the Uvalde Consolidated Impartial Faculty District’s personal police chief had assumed command of the incident and made the choice to carry off on sending officers in to neutralize the gunman, apparently believing the rapid risk to college students inside had abated after an preliminary flurry of gunfire from inside.

However even because the officers waited in a hallway outdoors the classroom, a minimum of two fourth-grade ladies cowering inside positioned frantic, whispered telephone calls to native emergency-911 dispatchers pleading for police to ship assist, in keeping with DPS.

Gutierrez mentioned the Texas Fee on State Emergency Communications, an company that displays the 911 system, advised his workplace that each one such calls positioned in Uvalde are routed to the Uvalde Police Division solely, not the varsity district’s police division.

Which means the on-scene commander on the time of the capturing, Pete Arredondo, who’s chief of the varsity district’s separate police drive, was not instantly aware of the calls from faculty kids underneath assault, Gutierrez mentioned.

Gutierrez acknowledged he couldn’t rule out whether or not details about the 911 calls in query have been relayed from Uvalde police to Arredondo in actual time, although the dispatch middle was not directing the calls to Arredondo’s company.

The pinnacle of DPS, state police Colonel Steven McGraw, has mentioned Arredondo made “the unsuitable resolution” by ready virtually an hour to breach the classroom, a transfer at odds with regulation enforcement doctrine requiring officers to pursue and confront an energetic shooter immediately.

Gutierrez mentioned “each regulation enforcement unit that was at that faculty” bears some accountability for what occurred.

The state senator additionally criticized Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, for declining to name the state legislature again right into a particular session to handle “an issue that’s staring him sq. within the face.”

Gutierrez mentioned there have been indicators of rising willingness, even inside a Republican Celebration lengthy immune to more durable gun legal guidelines, to think about such measures as elevating the authorized age for buying rifles from 18 to 21.

The homicide weapon utilized in Uvalde, an AR 15-style semiautomatic rifle, was legally bought by the shooter on his 18th birthday, and he later purchased a second rifle and tons of of rounds of ammunition, in keeping with police.

Abbott on Wednesday known as as a substitute for the formation of particular committees to look at faculty security, psychological well being and police coaching and to suggest coverage adjustments for the legislature and governor’s workplace to undertake.