In the last exchange she had with the child, the mom heartbreakingly told the boy that she was proud of him and that she loved him, giving him a hug goodbye - not knowing it would be the last time she would see him alive. She took a picture showing her son showing off his certificate. The child's mother, Felicha Martinez, told the Washington Post Tuesday that just hours before the massacre, the mom had been at the school to see her son participate an honor roll ceremony. Xavier Lopez, 10, was the first student victim to be identified as one of Ramos' victims. State officials have called Arredondo the 'incident commander' for the shooting, which he disputes, saying he issued no orders to other law enforcement agencies and assumed someone else would take charge. There have been conflicting reports as to whether the breach team went against orders to enter the classroom, and Arredondo insists that he did not object when the team moved to enter the room. That group on the north side, which included Border Patrol agents and a sheriff's deputy, is the one that breached the classroom. 'Each time I tried a key I was just praying,' Arredondo said. But his search proved fruitless until a group of officers on the north side of the hallway called his cellphone and told him they had found a key that could open the classroom.Īrredondo told the Tribune that he checked the doors of rooms 111 and 112 when he first responded to the shooting and found them locked, an account that directly contradicts the report that surveillance video showed no attempt to open the doors. It was not until 12.50pm that a team led by Border Patrol agents took the initiative and breached the door to room 111 and killed Ramos. Ramos then entered classroom 111 from the hallway, and began slaughtering students in that room and the connecting classroom, 112. The shooter entered Robb Elementary at 11.33am on May 24, entering through an exterior door that had been pulled shut by a teacher but that failed to lock automatically as it was supposed to - another hint that something was wrong with the school's door locks. Regardless, they did have access to prybars that could have opened the door without a key, the source said. Police on the scene may have wrongly assumed that the classroom door was locked as they stood in the hallway for over an hour. It means that Ramos would not have been able to lock the door from the inside, and if it was unlocked when he entered, may have remained so. However, the progression of events suggests that the automatic door locks on the classroom may have failed, because the gunman Salvador Rolando Ramos was able to gain entry without a key.ĭoors at the school are designed to lock automatically when they close, and can only be locked or unlocked from the outside with a key, according to the police source. It has now emerged they were trying out keys in the doors of other nearby classrooms, rather than the one where the killings were taking place, in a bid to find a master they could then use to open the murder room.Įmbattled Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who led the response on-scene, has previously insisted that the classroom door was locked, and he spent much of the standoff personally searching for a master key to the school. Ramos wouldn't have been able to lock the door of the room from the inside either, it is claimed.Ĭops spoke of battling to find a master key for the door on the day of the attack, believing the room to have been locked. Robb Elementary had an automatic door locking system in place, which locked doors once they'd closed.īut at least one was broken on the day of gunman Salvador Ramos's massacre, allowing him to gain entry to the school.Īnd it's now believed the door of the classroom he targeted may also have been broken, meaning cops could have entered it freely. The surveillance footage from inside Robb Elementary School during the May 24 massacre has not been publicly released, but has been seen by the Express-News. Surveillance footage from inside Robb Elementary School is said to show shows that police made no effort to open the door, and there is reason to believe it may even have been unlocked, a law enforcement source told the San Antonio Express-News. Police in Uvalde, Texas never attempted to open the door of a classroom while a gunman spent 77 minutes killing 19 children and two teachers who were inside, it is claimed.