An Uvalde teacher who was accused of leaving open the door used by the Robb Elementary School gunman is “heartbroken”, her lawyer has said.
On 24 May, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos used a military-style assault rifle and killed 19 students and two teachers of the school, in the second-worst school shooting in America since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012.
Without naming the teacher involved, officials initially said a door to the school had been propped open with a rock, allowing Ramos to enter the building despite it going into lockdown after he arrived and started shooting.
Don Flanary, the lawyer of the teacher who has not been identified, said the accusations against her have traumatised her.
“It’s traumatic for her when it’s insinuated that she’s involved, [that she left] the door open,” Mr Flanary told ABC News. “She’s heartbroken.”
Detailing the events of 24 May, Mr Flanary said the teacher propped a door open with a rock and walked out to retrieve food from a colleague outside the school before the massacre took place.
On her way out, she saw Ramos crashing a grey Ford pickup truck and exiting the vehicle, he said. “She sees him throw a bag over the fence and he has the weapon, the gun, around his chest,” Mr Flanary said. “He hops the fence and starts running at her.”
The teacher “immediately turns and she runs inside, kicks the rock out, slams the door”.
“She thought she was going to die herself. She was waiting for him to come in,” Mr Flanary said. “Obviously she’s heartbroken with all the lives lost.”
After crashing his truck, Ramos reportedly fired at people who had come over upon hearing the crash, but they escaped unhurt. He then entered Robb Elementary with an assault rifle and tactical vest, and killed 19 children and two teachers. During the attack he barricaded himself inside a classroom to prevent police entry.
Steven C McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, had initially said that the teacher had propped the door open, which was then used as an “access point” by the gunman, suggesting a critical error that may have played a significant role in the shooting.
“That back door was propped open,” Mr McCraw had said. “It wasn’t supposed to be propped open; it was supposed to be locked.”
Later, retracting the statement, Travis Considine, chief of communications with the Texas Department of Public Safety, confirmed that the teacher had in fact shut the door behind her, but it “did not lock as it should”.
“And now investigators are looking into why that was.”
Since the shooting, law enforcement and state officials have struggled to present an accurate timeline and details of the event, with the public criticising the police’s delay in storming the campus to contain the gunman.
It has prompted the US Department of Justice to conduct a critical incident review of the law enforcement response to the mass shooting.
The Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, which calls itself as “the largest police labour organisation in the state,” said in a statement that there has been a lot of “false information” surrounding the attack.
