‘Unfathomable’: NBC reporter breaks down the 2 key gaps in Uvalde police response
MSNBC's "Deadline: White House" on Friday covered shocking reporting on failures by law enforcement responding to the Uvalde mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
Two days after the massacre, Victor Escalon, the regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, refused to answer questions about the long gap in the shooting timeline.
For analysis, MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace interviewed NBC News reporter Ken Dilanian about the two gaps in time.
"The ten-minute gap raises the question of why those police didn't arrive sooner when the station where [reporter Kerry Sanders] is standing is about a mile from the school," Dilanian said. "So there's a huge question there."
He said there were "so many questions" about the second, 60-minute gap.
"Where was that [Uvalde Police Department] S.W.A.T. team in the hour while they were waiting for the Border Patrol tactical team to come?" he asked. "It's really just unfathomable, and law enforcement officials who are watching this across the country, as Tom Winter said earlier on the air, are aghast at what happened here."
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Wallace then read breaking news on how law enforcement may have been spending its time during the hour-gap, with the Wall Street Journalreporting a woman claims she was detained by a U.S. marshal.
"Ms. Gomez, a farm supervisor, said that she was one of numerous parents who began encouraging—first politely, and then with more urgency—police and other law enforcement to enter the school. After a few minutes, she said, federal marshals approached her and put her in handcuffs, telling her she was being arrested for intervening in an active investigation," the newspaper reported. "Ms. Gomez convinced local Uvalde police officers whom she knew to persuade the marshals to set her free. Around her, the scene was frantic. She said she saw a father tackled and thrown to the ground by police and a third pepper-sprayed. Once freed from her cuffs, Ms. Gomez made her distance from the crowd, jumped the school fence, and ran inside to grab her two children. She sprinted out of the school with them."
Former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi blasted the changing stories from law enforcement, who also initially claimed the gunman had been engaged by an armed school resource officer, which authorities have admitted was a lie.
"The facts are so in conflict with each other right now that the only thing I can tell you with certainty is that the communications coming out of law enforcement right now are horribly broken. We're all familiar with the physician's Hippocratic Oath, do no harm. That press conference today by that regional DPS director did harm."
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He noted we don't even know for sure which federal agency's tactical team reported.
Watch the clip below or at this link.
NOW WATCH:Parents of Texas school shooting victims question police delays
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