Robb Elementary to be demolished after Uvalde school shooting

Robb Elementary School, where 19 students and two teachers were gunned down last month while police loitered in the hallway, will be torn down.

Hours after Texas law enforcement testified in the Capitol about the failed police response to the school shooting, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin told residents that it was his “understanding” that the crime scene will be demolished

“We could never ask a child to go back, or a teacher to go back into that school ever,” McLaughlin said during a city council meeting Tuesday night.

On May 24, 18-year-old suspect Salvador Ramos walked into the elementary school uninterrupted and opened fire inside two classrooms, killing 21 people.

“Three minutes after the subject entered the west building, there was sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to violate, distract and neutralize the subject,” Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said Tuesday.

Instead, they waited one hour, 14 minutes and eight seconds to go into the classrooms where the gunman was laying waste to fourth graders. In that time, Ramos had allegedly fired 100 rounds of ammunition.

McCraw placed the blame squarely at the feet of Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo, the commanding officer on the scene.

“The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children,” McCraw said Tuesday.

“The officers had weapons; the children had none. The officers had body armor; the children had none. The officers had training; the subject had none.”