New details on the Robb Elementary shooting suggest that an unnamed female teacher did not leave open the exterior door that Ramos used to access the school after propping it open using a rock, Don Flanary, the counsel representing the teacher, told San Antonio Express-News.
“She saw the wreck,” Flanary told the publication, referring to when Ramos crashed his grandmother’s truck before entering the school. “She ran back inside to get her phone to report the accident. She came back out while on the phone with 911. The men at the funeral home yelled, ‘He has a gun!’ She saw him jump the fence, and he had a gun, so she ran back inside.”
“She kicked the rock away when she went back in. She remembers pulling the door closed while telling 911 that he was shooting. She thought the door would lock because that door is always supposed to be locked,” Flanary said.
Flanary’s statement mostly agrees with the timeline authorities have established at this time.
However, one nuance contradicted a May 27 statement made by Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
“We know from video evidence, at 11:27 [a.m.], the exterior door … what we know the shooter entered … was propped open by a teacher,” McCraw told reporters at the May 27 press conference.
“At 11:28, the suspect’s vehicle crashes into a ditch, as previously described. The teacher runs to room 132 to retrieve a phone, and that same teacher walks back to the exit door,” the officer said. “And [the] door remains propped open.”
McCraw added that the door “wasn’t supposed to be propped open. It was supposed to be locked. And certainly, the teacher that went back for her cellphone propped it open again. So that was an access point that the subject used.”
The nuance, authorities confirmed on May 31, is that the teacher had shut the door. However, the door did not lock.
“We did verify she closed the door. The door did not lock. We know that much and now investigators are looking into why it did not lock,” Travis Considine, chief communications officer for the Texas Department of Public Safety, told AP News on Tuesday.
By Gary Bai
