Abbott ‘livid,’ says he was ‘misled’ on police response to shooting

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he “was misled” and is “livid” over inaccurate information he was given about the police response to the Texas elementary school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers. 

During a press conference on Friday hours after police acknowledged they should have engaged with an active shooter at a deadly school shooting, Abbott said he was given incorrect information about the initial response.

“I was misled,” Abbott said. “I am livid about what happened.”

Abbott earlier this week heaped praise on police for their response to the shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

On Friday, he reversed course.

“As everyone has learned, the information I was given has turned out, in part, to be inaccurate, and I am absolutely livid about that,” he said.

“My expectation is that the law enforcement leaders leading the investigations … they get to the bottom of every fact with absolute certainty.”

Videos have surfaced since the shooting of parents urging police officers to go to the school and police stopping parents from charging in themselves. 

“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” said Javier Cazares, the father of a fourth-grader who died during the shooting.

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), who represents the district in which the shooting took place, said the shooting lasted an hour with a 30-minute “lull” when the shooter barricaded himself into a room. Many students were evacuated during that time. 

“All of it, I understand, lasted about an hour, but this is where there’s kind of a 30-minute lull,” Gonzales told CNN. “They feel as if they’ve got him barricaded in. The rest of the students in the school are now leaving.”

Police on Friday said they should have sought to engage with the shooter earlier as terrifying details about what was happening inside the school trickled out. One child told CNN she had put the blood of a classmate over her body and played dead as the shooter played music in an adjoining classroom.

Abbott vowed that every official on the scene would be investigated and every minute of the events that day would need to be explained. 

“There are people who deserve answers the most and those are the families who lives have been destroyed,” Abbott said. “They need answers that are accurate.”