Angeli Gomez is the mother of two kids who attend school at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. On the day of the horrific mass shooting there that claimed the lives of 19 children and two adults, Gomez's kids both had graduation ceremonies. Gomez is a farm worker; she attended the ceremonies, hugged her kids, and then went back to her job.
Shortly thereafter, she learned that an armed gunman—18-year-old Salvador Ramos—was attacking the school. She sped back, going 100 miles per hour.
In an interview with CBS that aired this weekend, Gomez explained how she was able to enter the school and rescue her two children despite the cops' active efforts to thwart her. The entire interview is a damning indictment of law enforcement's mishandling of the shooting, but one new detail bears particular emphasis: According to Gomez, the police subsequently contacted her and said that the media attention she was generating for criticizing them could lead to obstruction of justice charges. (Gomez is on probation for unspecified though decades-old charges.)
"She was holding back from sharing her story until now because a judge told her she was brave and her probation would be shortened," reported CBS's Lilia Luciano.
So not only did the police fail to do anything meaningful to stop the shooter for more than an hour, and not only did they obstruct, handcuff, and arrest parents who understandably tried to take matters into their own hands, but they also allegedly tried to cover their tracks by intimidating this mother into silence.
Peter Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief who coordinated the pathetic police response, is no longer cooperating with the investigation into what went wrong.
The post Uvalde Cops Reportedly Tried To Silence the Mom Who Rescued Her Kids and Criticized the Police Response appeared first on Reason.com.
