A instructor wounded in final month’s faculty taking pictures in Texas slammed first responders as “cowards” for standing by exterior his classroom whereas the gunman killed all 11 of his younger college students as they tried to play lifeless.
“You have a bulletproof vest, I had nothing. You’re supposed to protect and serve. There is no excuse for their actions and I will never forgive them. I will never forgive them,” Arnulfo Reyes mentioned in an interview with “Good Morning America” Tuesday from a hospital, the place he’s recovering from a number of gunshot wounds.
The Robb Elementary School instructor mentioned his class was watching a film following a scholar awards ceremony round 11:30 a.m. on May 24 after they heard gunshots. He directed the children to get underneath a desk, simply as they had been skilled, and advised them to “act like you’re asleep.”
When he circled, he mentioned the gunman was standing in his classroom and shot him a number of occasions.
“I told myself, I told my kids to act like they’re asleep, so I’m going to act like I’m asleep also,” he mentioned of an ordeal that might final roughly 80 minutes. “And I prayed and prayed that I would not hear none of my students talk.”
The gunman killed 19 college students — together with each little one in Reyes’ classroom — and two academics in the course of the rampage.
The Texas Department of Public Safety has mentioned that a number of officers entered the varsity constructing minutes after the killer, however they had been met with gunfire and retreated. The faculty police chief made “the wrong decision” to delay confronting the shooter, the general public security director mentioned, despite the fact that greater than a dozen officers stood exterior the classroom whereas the slaughter continued.
After ready greater than an hour within the faculty constructing hallway, an ad-hoc crew of officers defied the command to face by and stormed the classroom, killing the gunman.
Reyes mentioned he heard a scholar in a next-door classroom cry out for assist after officers first entered the constructing after which left. Though the cops apparently didn’t hear the woman, the gunman did. Reyes mentioned he may hear him stroll to the place the kid lay and hearth his gun once more.
A fourth-grader who survived the taking pictures mentioned in an earlier interview that his classmate was fatally shot after she cried “help” when officers requested the children to yell in the event that they wanted help.
Reyes, crying, expressed remorse that he couldn’t have executed extra to avoid wasting his college students, however mentioned they had been helpless.
“We set them up to be like ducks,” he mentioned.
In a message aimed toward college students’ mother and father, he mentioned: “I’m sorry. I tried my best. Please don’t be angry with me.”
He vowed to advocate for elevating the age restrict to buy an AR-style rifle just like the one used within the assault. The killer legally bought two of the assault-style weapons days after his 18th birthday.
“I will go to the end of the world to make sure that things get changed,” Reyes mentioned.
This article initially appeared on HuffPost and has been up to date.