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She had no choice.
By Nia Tipton — Written on May 27, 2022
A Texas mother whose two children were inside Robb Elementary School during Tuesday's mass shooting reportedly jumped the fence and ran into the building to save her kids after noticing Uvalde police weren't doing anything.
Angeli Rose Gomez, who drove 40 miles from her job as a farm supervisor to the elementary school when she heard about the shooting, told the Wall Street Journal about the lack of response from law enforcement ass the gunman barricaded himself in a fourth-grade classroom.
"The police were doing nothing," Gomez, whose two children were in second and third grade, told The Journal. "They were just standing outside the fence. They weren't going in there or running anywhere."
The worried mom saved her children from Robb Elementary School after begging Uvalde police to take action.
Gomez said she was put in handcuffs by federal marshals for "intervening in an active crime scene," as she and many other parents demanded officers enter the school.
Eventually, Gomez was able to persuade Uvalde's law enforcement officers to release her, and she was able to move away from the crowd.
Gomez then hopped the fence surrounding the school, sprinted inside, and was able to rescue her children and make it out of the school alive.
Since the devastating school shooting at the elementary school, where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos entered the building with an assault rifle and tactical vest, killing 19 students and two teachers, reports have emerged of law enforcement officers refusing to immediately confront the gunman.
Bystanders standing outside the school were extremely frustrated with police that, like Gomez, considered storming the building themselves.
Juan Carranza, who lives across the street from the elementary school told the Associated Press that people were shouting at police officers to enter the building as the shooting unfolded, but to no avail.
"Go in there! Go in there!" he said he heard one woman shouting.
Between the time the shooter entered the elementary school before he was eventually shot and killed by a Border Patrol Agent, he spent roughly 40 minutes barricaded inside a classroom.
Gomez told The Journal that one parent was pepper-sprayed as he attempted to get into the school, and another was tackled by authorities.
On Thursday, Texas DPS Lieutenant Chris Olivarez told CNN: "The active shooter situation, you want to stop the killing, you want to preserve life, but also one thing that — of course, the American people need to understand that officers are making entry into this building. They do not know where the gunman is."
"At that point, if they pursued it any further — not knowing where the suspect was at — they could've been shot, they could've been killed and, at that point, that gunman would have the opportunity to kill other people inside that school."
Law enforcement officers who responded to the Robb Elementary School shooting have begun facing mounds of criticism for their lack of urgency, something that policing experts say could have saved lives.
"That is the simple policy, no question," Kalfani Turè, a policing expert and assistant professor of criminology at Mount Saint Mary's University in Maryland, told Insider.
"You have to enter the school and pursue the individual with high-power firearms to finality."
"This is a situation where you have to be a superhero."
Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics. Follow her on Instagram.