May 27 Texas school massacre news

While taking questions from reporters during Friday's news conference, Col. Steven McCraw of the Texas Department of Public Safety criticized some aspects of the police response to the shooting, in particular regarding the time it took for officers to engage with the gunman.

"A decision was made that this was a barricaded subject situation," McCraw said of the incident commander's "thought process" at the time.

Rather than immediately try to breach the classroom and engage with the gunman, McCraw said the commander — who he later identified as the school district's chief of police — decided that "there was time to retrieve the keys, and wait for a tactical team with the equipment to go ahead and breach the door and take on the subject."

"We believe there should have been an entry as soon as you can," McCraw continued. "When there's an active shooter, the rules change."

The revelation explains the lengthy wait between when officers first arrived to the school at 11:44 a.m. local time and when a tactical team finally entered the room and killed the gunman at 12:50 p.m. local time. The tactical team was able to enter using keys from a janitor, McCraw said.

Hear the Texas official during the press conference here:

CNN's Nora Neus, Eric Levenson, Michelle Krupa and Elizabeth Wolfe contributed reporting to this post. 

The Uvalde shooter did not post publicly on Facebook that he shot his grandmother and then was going to shoot at a school, Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw said. It was a private message on a Facebook application, he said.

The shooter, Salvador Ramos, asked his sister in September 2021 to help him buy a gun, and she "flatly refused," McCraw said.

In Instagram chats with four people in March, he discussed buying a gun, McCraw said.

On March 3, one person wrote, "word on the street is you're buying a gun." Ramos replied, "just bought something rn," McCraw said.

On March 14, there was an Instagram post by Ramos in quotations "10 more days."

"A user replied, 'are you going to shoot up a school or something?' The subject replied, 'no and stop asking dumb questions, and you'll see,' McCraw said.

Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw outlined the ammunition that was found at the school and on the gunman.

There were a total of 58 magazines at the school related to the crime scene, he said:

There were two magazines in the suspect's residence, for a total of 60 magazines.

The gunman purchased and had a total of 1,657 total rounds of ammunition, 315 of the rounds were inside the school and 142 of those were spent cartridges.

After firing "multiple shots" outside, the gunman entered Robb Elementary in Uvalde at 11:33 a.m. local time, Col. Steven McCraw of the Texas Department of Public Safety said at a news conference on Friday.

"The suspect begins shooting into room 111 or 112. It's not possible to determine from the video angle that we have at this point in time," McCraw said.

Police officers were also inside the school within minutes, having entered using the same door as the gunman. "A total of seven officers were on the scene," McCraw said, by 11:35 a.m., which is approximately when two of those officers were shot — "grazing wounds," he clarified — near the door to the classroom the gunman was in.

The gunman then continued to fire inside the classroom, with the door closed and locked, McCraw said.

"He had purchased and had a total of 1,657 total rounds of ammunition," McCraw said, and fired nearly 200 rounds during his rampage. Authorities found 142 spent cartridges inside the school, with another 22 found outside on school property and another 22 again found at the site of the gunman's crashed car.

Another 173 live rounds from the gunman's supplies were found inside the school.

Thirty-five spent law enforcement cartridges were also located inside the school. "Eight of those were in the hallway," McCraw said, and "27 were inside classroom 111, where the suspect was killed." 

CNN's Shawn Nottingham contributed reporting.

Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw said that when law enforcement arrived to the two classrooms that the gunman shot into, the doors were locked and they breached the door using a janitor's keys.

They killed the suspect once they entered the room.

Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw outlined today at a news conference the timeline of the shooting at Uvalde's Robb Elementary School.

At 11:27 a.m. local time, a teacher propped open the exterior door that the shooter eventually entered the school, according to video evidence, McCraw said.

At 11:28 a.m., the gunman crashed a vehicle near the school into a ditch. Two men at a funeral home went to the crash scene and they began running when the gunman shot at them.

The teacher then ran to retrieve a phone and walked back to exit door. The door remained propped open.

The teacher called 911 at 11:30 a.m. local time. One minute later, the gunman started walking in the school parking lot and shooting into classroom windows.

Patrol cars got to the funeral home at the same time, he said.

A school resource officer was not on the scene, McCraw said, but heard the 911 call and drove to the area. The officer sped to who he thought was the suspect, driving right by the actual suspect who was hunkered down by a vehicle.

Multiple shots were fired at the school starting at 11:32 a.m., he said.

The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) are giving an update right now at a news conference about Tuesday's mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, as questions emerge about their response.

Some background: A Texas law enforcement official said Thursday the 18-year-old gunman who killed 21 people at the elementary school was not confronted by police before he entered the school, contradicting earlier comments from authorities and raising further questions about the police response to the massacre.

The official's comments came in a news conference that added further confusion to the timeline of Tuesday's horrific shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead. The massacre marked the deadliest US school shooting in nearly a decade and was at least the 30th school shooting at a K-12 school in 2022. And it has thrown the nation — where active shooter attacks jumped more than 50% last year — yet again into a fury of anger and grief amid renewed calls for gun laws reform.

CNN's Eric Levenson, Holly Yan and Joe Sutton contributed reporting to this post.

The United States Marshals Service said its deputies responded to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, after receiving a call for assistance at 11:30 a.m. local time.

After driving nearly 70 miles, deputies arrived at 12:10 p.m. local time, USMS said in a statement posted to Twitter.

"The first Deputy US Marshals who arrived on scene entered the school to assist BORTAC and other law enforcement already engaging with the shooter," the statement said, referring to the tactical unit of the United States Border Patrol.

Members of the USMS can be seen in a widely circulated social media video in which police are holding back parents pleading to enter Robb Elementary school as the violence unfolded.

The children who survived the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde are now reeling from the trauma of fearing for their lives and seeing their friends die.

These are their stories.

Jayden Perez

The moment his class heard gunfire, Jayden Perez's teacher locked the door and told her students to “hide and be quiet.” 

“It was very terrifying because I never thought that was going to happen,” Jayden told CNN. “(I’m) still sad about some of my friends that died.”

During the interview, Jayden started recalling the names of the deceased with whom he was friends. Then he stopped, looked at a row of crosses behind him bearing their names and said, “basically all of them.” 

When asked if he ever wants to go back to school, the fourth grader was clear and concise.

Edward Timothy Silva

Second grader Edward Timothy Silva's class was located near the fourth grade classroom when he heard "loud noises," he said, which sounded “kind of like fireworks.”

His mother, Amberlynn Diaz teared up, saying this is the first time she’d heard her son say that.

“It breaks my heart,” Diaz said. “He was asking me, does he have to go to school next year? And I just don't want him to be afraid of school. I want him to continue learning and not be scared of going back to school. I want him to have a normal life again.”

Miah Cerillo

11-year-old Miah Cerillo was in the fourth grade classroom where her friends and teachers were shot. When the shooter went to an adjoining classroom, she said she was scared that he would come back and shoot again. She put her hands in her friend's blood, who was dead next to her, and then smeared it all over herself to appear dead.

She spoke exclusively to CNN about her horrific experience that day, but declined to speak to any men because of what happened. She said she feels comfortable only speaking to women and also did not want to go on camera.

Cerillo was hit by fragments of the bullets, and they are visible on her back, shoulders and the back of her head.

Her parents have started GoFundMe specifically to pay for her therapy.