UVALDE, Texas – WARNING: Some viewers may find the video above disturbing.
A video has surfaced on social media showing parents desperately pleading with law enforcement officers to save children from a gunman’s rampage at a Uvalde elementary school.
The shooting happened Tuesday at Robb Elementary School when the 18-year-old gunman roamed inside for nearly an hour and opened fire, killing 19 children and two teachers.
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, the shooter crashed a truck near the back of the school at 11:28 a.m. before firing an AR-style rifle at two people coming out of a funeral home nearby. The shooter entered the school through an apparently unlocked door nearly 20 minutes later.
Police didn’t arrive at the scene until 12 minutes after the crash but didn’t go inside the school for five more minutes. Border Patrol tactical officers made their way inside the school about an hour later, at 12:45 p.m.
In the video, parents are seen outside the school pacing and pleading for officers to go inside and rescue the children.
“You know that there are kids, right?” one parent is heard saying in the video. “They’re little kids. They don’t know how to defend themselves.”
Juan Carranza, 24, told the Associated Press that he saw the scene from outside his house across the street from the school. He said that the officers did not go in despite the parents’ pleas.
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Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack, said he raced to the school when he heard about the shooting, arriving while police were still gathered outside the building.
Upset that police were not moving in, he raised the idea of charging into the school with several other bystanders.
“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” he said. “More could have been done.”
“They were unprepared,” he added.
When Border Patrol agents went inside, they encountered the shooter who was holed up inside of a fourth-grade classroom. Gunfire was exchanged, and at 12:58 p.m., law enforcement confirmed the shooter was killed.
The shooting at Robb Elementary School is the deadliest school shooting in the nation since the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in December of 2012.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.