A Uvalde teacher who survived a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school has spoken out and revealed his cousin is the disgraced Uvalde Schools police chief.
19 children and 2 teachers were shot dead on May 24 after 18-year-old Salvador Ramos stormed Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and began randomly shooting young children and staff.
Among the survivors of the horrific ordeal is Arnulfo Reyes, the school’s fourth-grade teacher, who revealed that Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo is his second cousin.
Slamming the disgraced chief, who came under fire for allegedly jeopardizing the lives of children after it was revealed he waited for 77 minutes to take on the active shooter, Reyes said he can’t understand why his cousin didn’t act immediately as active shooter training the chief underwent months before the massacre dictates.
He also blasted Arredondo’s claim that the police were waiting for a key to the classroom in which Ramos had barricaded himself saying the police chief knew the doorknob of the classroom was broken for at least two years.
“I wish he would have said, ‘I’m going in there because that’s my family.’ But he didn’t,” the fourth-grade teacher said.
“There’s really no excuse for 77 minutes,” he added.
As Reyes revealed, he had to play dead for one hour after Ramos shot him in the arm and killed 11 of his students. He also recalled the gunman shooting him in the back at one point.
While Arredondo has since the probe into his botched police response resigned from his elected position, Reyes doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to return to teaching after what he witnessed.
“No training would ever prepare anybody for this. It all happened too fast. Training, no training, all kinds of training – nothing gets you ready for this,” he said.
“We trained our kids to sit under the table and that’s what I thought of at the time. But we set them up to be like ducks.”
By the time the police finally stormed the classroom and killed the shooter, Reyes, whose lungs began filling up with liquid after he was shot in the back, had already given up on his life.
“I pretty much had already given my life… to God and said ‘You know, please don’t let my children die in vain.’ If it’s my time, it’s my time,” he recalled.
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