You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

“They Could Have Saved Many More Lives”: Uvalde Mother Blasts Police Response

HeadlineJun 06, 2022

A mother in Uvalde, Texas, who was handcuffed by police while trying to rescue her children during the school shooting at Robb Elementary says she was later threatened with charges if she spoke out about what happened. In an interview with CBS News, Angeli Rose Gomez condemned the police response to the shooting that left 19 fourth graders and two teachers dead.

Angeli Rose Gomez: “They could have saved many more lives. They could have gone into that classroom, and maybe two or three would have been gone, but they could have saved a whole — a whole more — the whole class. They could have done something, gone through the window, sniped him through the window. I mean, something. But nothing was being done. If anything, they were being more aggressive on us parents that were willing to go in there. And like I told one of the officers, 'I don't need you to protect me. Get away from me. I don’t need your protection. If anything, I need you to go in there with me to go protect my kids.’ And if anything, they were being more aggressive on us. They were more pertained on keeping us back than getting into that school.”

In other developments from Uvalde, it now appears that the city’s school district police chief, Pete Arredondo, did not have his police radio during the school shooting. Arredondo was the incident commander who ordered officers to hold back from confronting the gunman.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top