“It’s hard to grieve when there’s no closure,” she said, six weeks after the massacre. Jacinto Cazares’ 9-year-old daughter was also killed. “It makes me sick to my stomach, the officer has this guy in his crosshairs … he could have taken him down,” he said. “One thing, right there, that could have stopped everything. And it didn’t.” And that was just the beginning of what Duran calls “a tsunami of failure at every agency that was there — every single one.” Two unlocked doors, a lack of effective command, officers’ positions inside and a loss of momentum after authorities entered the building were other issues highlighted in Wednesday’s report by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center. an active shooter and assault response training provider at the University of Texas. Uvalde’s mayor disputes the assessment of law enforcement’s response, saying the new report “doesn’t give a full and accurate account of what happened.” Mayor Don McLaughlin on Thursday disputed the first part of the assessment, which said a supervisor of the officer with a rifle who had spotted the gunman either did not hear him or responded too late when asked for permission to shoot. “No Uvalde police officers saw the shooter on May 24 before he entered the school,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “No Uvalde police officer had a chance to shoot the gunman.” There has already been widespread criticism of the law enforcement response. Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Stephen McCraw said there were enough officers and equipment to stop the gunman three minutes after he entered the school. Instead, it took 74 minutes for law enforcement to tackle him, during which time teacher Arnie Reyes, lying in his own blood in Classroom 111, thought he and his students had been forgotten. Inactivity is inscrutable for families. “These images that I’ve seen from all these agencies standing around … they’re under a tree, under the shade drinking water. And in my mind, I’m thinking, are these kids screaming for help? Are they calling 911 ? Are there still children who could have been saved?” Duran said, catching her breath while fighting back tears. Two family members who are particularly critical are Irma Garcia’s brother Marcus Lozano, a police officer, and her older son Cristian Garcia, who lost his father Joe to a heart attack two days after his mother’s death. “The moment I heard my mom was dead, I yelled, ‘I should have taken that bullet.’ I’m in the army. I know what needs to be done. I signed up for it … I told myself, if I was in that position, I would have rushed in there and taken a bullet,” Garcia said. “He had no armor. He had no shield. He had no backup. He was there. And then they didn’t do anything,” he continued, speaking of the gunman. “Why did my mom have to go to the door and look death in the crazy eyes and try to lock that door?” Lozano told CNN he was at the first briefing for families where they were allowed to ask questions and felt it was like “smoke and mirrors.” “What I was asking them was what did the first responding officers do, not engage the shooter? I live in San Antonio. It took me 50 minutes to get from San Antonio to… Uvalde. They got 77. I went through five towns and they tell me they didn’t have the firepower,” he said. Lozano blamed “bad police, bad tactics” for failing to stop the massacre. “I love my brothers in blue, but it’s like any profession, you know? This profession isn’t made for everybody,” he continued. “It’s all fine and dandy — you graduate from the academy, you get the badge, but when it comes time to suit up… you know, stare death in the face, they’ve gone weak in the knees.” He accepts that some may still have died. “It is a given that my sister [and] Mrs. Mireles — the adults will be first … because they are the biggest threat to him,” she said. “But all those babies should never have died.” Garcia wants those he deems responsible on the run from law enforcement. “Those officers that were in those corridors, I want them to resign. All of them,” he said. His aunt, Velma Duran, added: “Or fire them. I want to know who they are and I want their credentials taken away.” Garcia continued, “My mom was protecting these kids, but nobody protected her. So the whole police department here is a coward.” Cazares breaks down when he compares his daughter, Jackie, to those sent to rescue her. “My daughter was a fighter, she took a small bullet in the heart and she was still fighting,” he said. “He fought hard to stay alive. And these cowards could not enter. Who knows how long it’s been that way? But she was fighting within herself. “They all have to go. They all have to go.” Mayor McLaughlin told CNN he fears there could be a cover-up among law enforcement to avoid widespread liability, though both the Texas governor’s office and law enforcement chiefs have insisted investigations will continue to to reveal the truth. And both Duran and Cazares said they sometimes felt money and politics overshadowed the lives lost. Duran urged her fellow Texans to take action. “We can have safer schools. We can have bulletproof windows. We can have security guards at every point of entry or exit. If there are assault weapons, that’s going to continue. As we’ve seen these last few days — it’s assault. So we have to vote them out. people because right now it’s all about their money and political power.” CNN’s Rebekah Riess and Ray Sanchez contributed to this report.
