TEHRAN (Iran News) – The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the controversial police response to the school shooting massacre in Texas amid mounting anger from the families of the victims.

The inquiry of the school shooting in the city of Uvalde, Texas will cover why police officers waited over an hour in the hall outside the classroom where the shooter murdered 19 kids, two teachers, and wounded others.

The Department says it will conduct a “critical incident review” of the law enforcement action last Tuesday.

“The goal of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events,”
spokesperson Anthony Coley said.

He noted that the mayor of Uvalde, Don McLaughlin, had requested the review.

McLaughlin has told U.S. media that it was time to invest in America’s domestic problems and stop giving billions of dollars away “to countries that don’t like us.”

“We give billions of dollars away to countries that don’t even like us. We ought to take that money and invest in our own country and build facilities. Look at the homeless people in Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and all over the United States on the street that have problems, and they are not getting any help from anybody.”

The Uvalde mayor also lashed out at the lack of action by authorities to address the U.S. gun violence epidemic.

“The gun played a role in it, too, but what if we would have been able to help this child? What if some incident would have triggered somebody and we could have got him help? We might have avoided this, but the problem is we don’t do anything.”

Videos have emerged of parents begging police officers outside the school to allow them inside to save their own children, with some parents saying they were handcuffed and others threatened with stun guns if they refused to disperse.

In the days following the tragedy, officials publicly stated conflicting accounts of how the local police and federal authorities handled the massacre.

Coley claims the review would be conducted in a fair, impartial, and independent manner and the findings would be made public.

“As with prior Justice Department after-action reviews of mass shootings and other critical incidents, this assessment will be fair, transparent, and independent,” he said.

However, It has not been made clear how the probe would be conducted, whether the law enforcement officials involved would be brought in to cooperate with the review and when the probe is expected to be completed.

Florida congresswoman and former Orlando police chief Val Demings demanded a “complete investigation”, arguing “we have more questions than answers.”

“We’ve got to do a job of keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people. There again, the Senate can take action on that,” she added.

High-level investigation is rare in the U.S. as the majority of reports following mass shootings (of which there have been too many) are generally compiled by local law enforcement agencies or outside groups.

In 2015, the Justice Department conducted a similar investigation after 14 people were killed in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California.

The Department did so again following the mass shooting at a venue in Orlando, Florida, a deadly attack that left 49 people dead and 53 people wounded.

This time, local police have been the subject of intense scrutiny from the public and parents of the children killed.

On Friday, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Steven McCraw, admitted it was “wrong” for officers to have waited about an hour after the shooting began and then confront the gunman.

The police’s twisting of the chain of events and different revelations has caused more grief and raised questions over whether more lives were lost because officers did not act faster to stop the gunman, who was ultimately killed by Border Patrol tactical officers.

The man in charge of the response at the time of the massacre, Uvalde school district police chief Pedro Arredondo, has been in hiding ever since the massacre occurred and under police protection.

Officials have denounced the failure to swiftly storm into the classroom where the gunman was barricaded.

Arredondo’s neighbor Lydia Torres, has told American Media “Pete [Pedro] Arredondo is a coward. He didn’t do his job. He failed the children. He is hiding in his home, requesting the PD [police department] patrol the area and guard his home day and night. He should come out and speak up.”

Officials initially said the shooter had “engaged” with a school resource officer but later changed that account, saying such an officer had not even been on campus.

Authorities later said that police officers had been in the hallway outside the classroom where the gunman had barricaded himself but waited until someone came with a key to unlock the door. This was more than an hour after gunfire began.

The police protocol that was put in place following the Columbine school shooting in Colorado in 1999 stipulates that police should confront the shooters as soon as possible.

Officials in Texas also said officers opted to wait to confront the gunman until reinforcements had arrived.

One mother in the Texas school massacre said her child had died from a single gunshot. Referring to the death Gutierrez says “the first responder that they eventually talked to said that their child likely bled out”

He pointed out “in that span of 30 or 40 minutes extra, that little girl might have lived.”

“So many things went wrong, here,” he added, although he said responsibility should not be on one police officer.
“At the end of the day, everybody failed, we failed these children,” he said, including lawmakers failing to pass stricter gun safety laws.

The gunman stormed into the school in the latest bout of gun-fueled mass killings in the United States and the nation’s worst school shooting since Sandy Hook a decade ago.

During the time that he had locked and barricaded himself into a classroom with the children and their teachers, one child made at least six calls to the 911 emergency number to plead for help from police, even as officers were standing right outside.

Texas Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw says “the fact that it took border patrol an hour later to come in and actually do the job for the police is pretty embarrassing.”

Crenshaw added. “So, let’s let the investigation play out, but it’s hard not to see how someone doesn’t get fired for this, for these very, very bad calls.”

On Sunday, President Joe Biden travelled to Uvalde seeking to comfort the relatives (Biden’s second trip in as many weeks to comfort a community in mourning –  on May 17, he was in Buffalo, after a white supremacist terrorist killed 10 Black people at a supermarket).

As the president left a church to head to private meetings with family members, a crowd of people gathered and began chanting “do something.”

Biden has not spoken publicly about the police response to the shooting.

Mckinzie Hinojosa, whose cousin, Eliahana Cruz Torres, 10, was killed, said “It’s more than mourning, we want to change. We want action. It continues to be something that happens over and over and over. A mass shooting happens. It’s on the news. People cry. Then it’s gone. Nobody cares. And then it happens again. And again.”

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TEHRAN (Iran News) – Another mass shooting at a U.S.  school has left the country in a state of shock, grief, and anger at the bloodshed of 21 victims.

The lone gunman, identified as an 18-year-old, stormed the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where he launched the bloody rampage.

The indiscriminate shooting spree murdered 19 children and two teachers, making the massacre the deadliest school shooting in the state’s history and the deadliest in the United States over the last decade.

The school caters to children who were in their third and fourth grade, meaning many of the victims, the majority of whom have been identified, are between the ages of seven and ten.

One of the two teachers murdered has also been identified as Eva Mireles, who had spent 17 years teaching fourth graders at the school.

The state’s Senator says four people have sustained injuries with some in critical condition.

University Health, the medical facility caring for two patients who are in critical condition has said another 10-year-old girl is in its care but is in a “good condition”. Also, a nine-year-old girl has been admitted and is in a “fair condition”.

Reports say among the injuries is a fourth-grade teacher, who is expected to survive after undergoing “intense surgery”.

The shooter, armed with two military-style rifles, was confronted and gunned down by police at the scene, after going from classroom to classroom sparking terror among children and teachers.

Authorities say the motive for the attack was not immediately clear and it is believed that he acted alone.

Investigators say the attacker had a handgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle with high-capacity magazines. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that two officers were struck by gunfire, though the governor noted their injuries were not serious.

The massacre took place on the last week of the school year and parents made long desperate attempts to find their children, begging authorities for information as they waited for hours outside in the parking area. Some were asked to give DNA samples to help identify the young victims.

Speaking to American news outlets, Mrs. Arizmendia said “It’s like a horror movie, If it’s not our kid, it’s someone we know. It’s our neighbors.”

The school district superintendent Hal Harrell, said “my heart is broken today… we’re going to need your prayers to get through this.”

The latest shooting comes just a week after a white gunman killed ten Black Americans in a “racially motivated attack” at a Buffalo supermarket in a predominantly black community.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres said “I’m deeply saddened by the heinous mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas. It is particularly heart-wrenching that most of the victims are children.”

Pope Francis said he is “heartbroken” at the news and called for action.
“I pray for the children and the adults who were killed and for their families. It is time to say ‘enough’ to the indiscriminate trafficking of weapons.  Let us all make a commitment so that tragedies like this cannot happen again,” he said.

The shooting; ten years after the Sandy elementary school massacre in Sandy Hook, Connecticut when a gunman killed 20 children and six adults has sparked angry outbursts from different sectors of American society about the urgent need to reform gun regulations.

Democrat Senator Chris Murphy made an emotional speech where he pointed out that these massacres only occur in the United States.

“This isn’t inevitable. These kids weren’t unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else,” It is a choice. It is our choice to let it continue.”

He strongly slammed the Republicans who claim the problem arises from mental illness and that firearms themselves are not the problem saying “spare me the bulls**t about mental illness, we don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world.”

He added “we’re not an outlier on mental illness… We’re an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their arms on firearms. That’s what makes America different.”

Murphy, who represented the district where the Sandy Hook massacre took place pleaded with Republicans to help Democrats pass gun reform legislation.

“I am here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees to beg my colleagues: find a path forward here,” he said.

Despite the pleas by Murphy and the many other similar reactions that have poured in, very little is expected to change.

The deadliest school shooting in the U.S. was an attack on Virginia Tech in 2007. The eleven-minute rampage killed 32 people and injured dozens more.

Following the latest massacre, Republican leaders in Texas have faced intense scrutiny for their longstanding opposition to gun control measures and their push to expand gun rights. Over the past few years, some of the most deadliest mass shootings in the country have taken place in the state.

The state’s governor Greg Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz are scheduled to speak at the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual convention in Houston. A powerful gun lobby in the American congress.

This weekend, the NRA is expected to host its annual meeting as planned in Houston, which would be just days after the deadly school shooting. An estimated 55,000 people are expected to be in attendance.

U.S. President Joe Biden asked, “when, in God’s name, are we going to stand up to the gun lobby.”

Judging by the regular massacres in the U.S., the answer to that question appears to be never.

It also displays a level of weakness and lack of leadership on the part of U.S. Presidents who try to take on the gun lobbies but are unable to do so, whereby they can invade countries thousands of miles away, killing innocent children on the other side of the world.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has also taken to social media to express his shock at the shooting but he refrained from mentioning anything about the urgent need for gun reform.

Reacting to the news, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, says her country’s quick change to gun laws following its 2019 terrorist attack where 51 Muslims were killed by a white supremacist at a Mosque was a “pragmatic” response, where “we saw something that wasn’t right and we acted on it.”

Last year, the FBI recorded the highest ever mass “active shooting” incidents on record and a 52 percent increase from the previous year.

Attacks in 2021, spread across 30 states according to the report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mass shootings in America have frequently led to public protests and calls for stricter background checks on gun sales and other firearm controls which are very common in other countries, but such measures have repeatedly failed in the face of strong Republican-led opposition.

According to a University of Michigan research letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine, last month firearms became the leading cause of death for U.S. children and adolescents starting in 2020, surpassing motor vehicle accidents.

The deadly trend of gun violence doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon, with a record number of firearms and ammunition on the streets of the United States.

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