As shots rang out inside Robb Elementary School, police chose to stand outside for 77 minutes, doing nothing to save the desperate children inside. Officers had to physically restrain parents who were begging them to get in there. But one mom was able to make it past officers and inside to save her own kids.
Angeli Gómez is a mom and farmworker in Uvalde. When she arrived on the scene, police were standing outside. Like other parents, she was baffled and pleading with them to go in. Following instructions from their commanding officer, they refused and used their efforts, instead, to hold parents back.
Gómez was able to get past the officers and make it inside. Now she's speaking out about what exactly happened that day.
Gómez says she had just been at the school for her kids' graduation ceremony. She had gone back to work when she got news of the shooting. She sped 40 miles back to the school and saw officers standing by.
“Right away, as soon as I parked my car, US marshals started coming towards my car saying I wasn’t allowed to be parked there,” she told CBS News. “He said, ‘We’re going to have to arrest you because you’re being very uncooperative,’ and I said, ‘Well, you’re going to have to arrest me because I’m going in there, and I’m telling you right now — I don’t see none of y’all in there.’”
"I told one of the officers, 'I don't need you to protect me. Get away from me. I don't need your protection. If anything, I need you to go in with me to go protect my kids,'" she said.
The US Marshals agency told The Wall Street Journal that they didn't handcuff parents, but Gomez says she was handcuffed briefly. As soon as the cuffs were taken off, she bolted into the building.
When she got inside, there wasn't a single officer in the building. Shots were continuing to ring out.
Gómez went to each of her sons' classrooms, collected them, and ran out of the school holding their hands.
While the brave mom is relieved to have her two children safe and sound, she can't stop thinking about the other children who could have been saved. “Nothing was being done,” she said. “If anything, [law enforcement] were being more aggressive on us parents that were willing to go in there.”
"They could have saved many more lives," Gómez said tearfully. "They could have gone into the classroom, and maybe two or three would have been gone, but they could have saved the whole, more, the whole class. They could have done something — gone through the window, sniped him through the window. Something, but nothing was being done."
The US Justice Department is investigating the police response to the mass shooting.
