“I’ve been advised that there’s a woman that’s been shot in the head off of Diaz Street. Woman shot in the head off of Diaz Street by (an) unknown subject,” Nolasco radioed at 11:35 a.m. on May 24 on the sheriff’s office frequency, repeating the information seconds later on the police department channel that was already full of transmissions about shots fired and a gunman jumping a school fence. Why Nolasco changed course toward the woman’s house – and if he could have initiated a lockdown at the school sooner – has been an unanswered question for state investigators. He said later he was alerted to the attack on the woman by a resident who stopped him as he drove past
Even though he had the name of a suspect, knew that the man had tried to kill his grandmother, and was less than half a mile from the school, Nolasco chose not to go, instead sending some of his deputies. He stayed with the grandmother as medics arrived, loaded her onto a stretcher and took her to a hospital.
Still at the grandmother’s house, he asked a deputy, “Do they have him surrounded?”
A Texas House investigative committee into the Robb massacre said it received information that Nolasco learned about the shooting on Diaz Street by means other than being stopped as he headed toward the school, and perhaps earlier. They requested his phone records to determine whether quicker reporting of the attack on the grandmother could have led to an earlier lockdown at the school or a faster response.
When it issued
its report in July, the committee had not received those phone records, though Nolasco told CNN he has now submitted them.
Uvalde Sheriff Ruben Nolasco learned the shooter's name. He went to Robb Elementary. He did not take charge, even when he learned children were trapped. Six months after 19 children and two teachers died, the county's top law enforcement official defended his actions as adequate.
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