Texas Lt. Gov. Patrick: ‘We were not told the truth’ on Uvalde shooting

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) said state officials “were not told the truth” about the time police took to neutralize the shooter at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. 

Speaking on “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Saturday, Patrick said police made a poor decision to wait to engage the gunman, which cost lives.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Friday that he was “misled” about the police response to the shooting and is “livid.” Abbott had previously praised police for their response to the situation. 

Police have come under increasing scrutiny in the past few days over the amount of time they took to engage the shooter, who killed 19 students and two teachers Tuesday. Law enforcement officials gave conflicting accounts of the timeline of the events of the shooting in the days immediately following it. 

Patrick said officials were told that a security guard was at the school when the shooter arrived.

Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said at a press conference Friday that an officer who was responding to a 911 call went to the school but drove past the gunman, who hid behind a car. 

Patrick said state officials were also not informed of the 45 minutes to an hour that passed when police were present at the school, but the shooter was still firing inside a classroom where he had barricaded himself.

Texas law enforcement officials have said that local police were wrong to have waited to engage the gunman. 

McCraw said the on-scene commander thought the status of the incident had shifted from an active shooter situation to a barricaded subject and children were no longer in harm’s way. 

“Imagine the parent who has to go through this for the rest of their life, and they will be thinking ‘Was my child still alive and could have been saved?’ ” Patrick said.