Photo: CBS News
A Uvalde mom is speaking out after she says she was handcuffed while begging police to rescue her kids from the school shooting that killed19 students and 2 teachers.
Angeli Rose Gomez had two sons atRobb Elementary Schoolon May 24 when a gunman entered and opened fire.
Gomez toldCBS Newsthat she went to the scene after hearing about the shooting. When she arrived at the school, the gunman was still inside, and so were her two children. She could hear shots being fired. She confronted the assembled police for not going into the building, and said she was handcuffed for several minutes.
Gomez recalled the incident to CBS News.
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“Right away, as I parked, a US Marshal started coming toward my car, saying that I wasn’t allowed to be parked there,” she recalled. “And he said, ‘Well, we’re gonna have to arrest you because you’re being very uncooperative.'”
Gomez began to criticize the police response. “Y’all are standing with snipers and y’all are far away, I got to go in there,” she recounted saying. The officer then “immediately put me in cuffs.”
Gomez says that a local officer convinced the marshal to remove the handcuffs.
In a May 27 tweet, the US Marshalsdenied placing anyone in handcuffs, saying, “Deputy marshals never arrested or placed anyone in handcuffs while securing the crime scene perimeter.”
Gomez said that after the handcuffs were taken off, she rushed into the school to save her sons. She went to both of their classrooms and ran with them out of the building.
“I was just thinking that they could have saved many more lives,” Gomez told CBS News. “They could have gone into that classroom and maybe two or three would have been gone.”
But now, Gomez says that someone is trying to silence her. She told CBS News that she has received a threatening call from someone in law enforcement who wanted her to stop speaking out. She claims she was told that if she continued to talk to the media, she would be charged with a probation violation for obstruction of justice. Gomez did not specify further who the call came from.
Law enforcement has faced sharp criticism for their response to the shooting.
Three days after the shooting, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety told reporters that the incident commander on the scene made the “wrong decision"to wait at least 45 minutesbefore breaching the classroom doors.
Col. Steven McCraw told reporters that the commander believed that the gunman had barricaded himself into an empty classroom, and that no children were at risk. “He believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject,” he said.
A week later,video surfacedthat seemed to show 911 dispatchers relaying information to the officers on the scene that they were receiving emergency calls from children inside the classroom with the gunman.
“Child is advising he is in the room, full of victims,” the dispatcher can be heard saying in the video. “Full of victims at this moment.”
“They could have done something,” Gomez said. “Gone through the window, sniped him through the window. I mean, something! But nothing was being done. If anything, they were being more aggressive on us parents that were willing to go in there.”
source: people.com
