In an unique interview with CNN, Gutierrez was requested if she agreed with a legislative report that cited a “tradition of non-compliance with security insurance policies” on the faculty.
“Completely not,” Gutierrez replied.
“Each time an alert was raised, each trainer on this campus thought it might be a possible escalation of the state of affairs,” she stated.
Gutierrez stated she instantly initiated a lockdown with an app referred to as Raptor after listening to a gunman had jumped a college fence.
“I really feel like I did the coaching I used to be given to the most effective of my talents,” she stated when requested if she thought she ought to lose her job. “And I will query myself for the remainder of my life.”
Final month, Texas Division of Public Security Director Col. Steven McCraw referred to as the police response an “abject failure”. He blamed faculty district police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo alone, whom officers recognized because the on-scene commander, for not participating the shooter.
Arredondo, who’s on unpaid administrative go away, has beforehand stated he doesn’t take into account himself the incident commander that day.
Requested concerning the delay of regulation enforcement in confronting the shooter, Gutierrez stated she was pissed off however unable to search out fault.
“I am not regulation enforcement and I can not cross judgment and inform them find out how to do their job, identical to I would not ask them to inform me find out how to do mine,” she stated. “I do not really feel in a position to blame anybody.”
Gutierrez added: “I’d blame issues which can be out of my circle of management, which is to say I can not make the legal guidelines. So I can not, I can not determine how previous it’s important to be. to purchase a gun. I can not determine what number of cartridges somebody can purchase. I can not determine what stage of safety we now have on campus.
Principal felt ‘my workers and college students had been all protected’
The principal stated she prayed in the course of the shootings and subsequent siege.
“I wished everybody to come back out protected,” she stated. “I did not need to go away till I used to be reassured that each one of my workers and college students had been out and protected. Till that final second, I nonetheless felt like my workers and college students had been everybody protected.”
The college board didn’t touch upon his go away at a gathering on Monday. Gutierrez, who began as a fourth-grade trainer in 2008, has labored for Uvalde CISD for greater than twenty years.
In a letter to members of the Home committee that investigated the taking pictures, Gutierrez challenged a lot of their findings. She stated the door to room 111 – one in all two lecture rooms the place the victims had been killed – was checked by custodial workers each night time, together with the day earlier than the taking pictures. She additionally wrote that she didn’t recall the trainer in that room complaining concerning the door not closing, in keeping with the letter, which was launched by her legal professional on Wednesday.
“What I do know for certain is that the door to room 111 truly locked,” she stated in the course of the interview. “And the rationale I do know that’s as a result of we do common campus excursions and I actually used my grasp key to unlock that door.”
Arnulfo Reyes, who taught in Room 111, advised CNN that Gutierrez’s claims in his letter concerning the door’s locking mechanism aren’t completely correct. He stated he didn’t complain concerning the door being locked, however relatively concerning the door being jammed or jammed all through the day.
Reyes stated he had complained concerning the door jamming a number of instances in three years. Reyes stated the door was locked in the course of the day and was usually locked when he arrived in school. When requested if he remembered the door being locked the day of the taking pictures, Reyes stated he did not.
Gutierrez in his letter acknowledged points with spotty Wi-Fi at Robb. She wrote that she didn’t use the general public tackle system on the day of the taking pictures as a result of her coaching was that utilizing it may “create panic”. She denied there was a ‘tradition of complacency’ in school and stated it was ‘unfair and inaccurate’ to conclude that she was complacent about security.
Gutierrez stated within the letter that she “will reside with the horror of those occasions for the remainder of my life” and that she desires to maintain her job “to be on the entrance strains serving to the youngsters who survived, the households of all these affected and the entire group of Uvalde.”
State Consultant Dustin Burrows, the chairman of the committee, stated in a press release that he had not acquired Gutierrez’s letter.
“The committee relied on interview testimony from a number of CISD Uvalde workers (together with workers and administration) and the CISD Uvalde Police Division to succeed in its conclusions concerning the practices which have passed off at Robb Elementary College,” Burrows stated.
A spokesperson for the Uvalde Consolidated Unbiased College District, citing a excessive quantity of media inquiries, requested for not less than two days to reply.
The report signifies that the principal and directors had been conscious of a defective lock
Gutierrez’s furlough got here as officers at Uvalde sought to reassure pissed off mother and father concerning the security of their kids when courses resume.
The report states that Gutierrez and faculty directors knew {that a} lock on one of many lecture rooms the place the murders passed off was malfunctioning and failed to repair it.
On the day of the taking pictures, Gutierrez was in his workplace after an awards ceremony and tried to provoke a lock on the Raptor app however “had bother elevating the alert attributable to poor wi-fi sign. -fi,” in keeping with the legislative report. She additionally didn’t try to “talk the lockdown alert through the varsity intercom”, the report stated.
College workers “steadily held doorways open and intentionally bypassed locks,” in keeping with the legislative report. This conduct was “tacitly condoned” by faculty directors and district police – and never handled as “severe offences”.
Locking the doorways as wanted may have slowed “the shooter’s progress for just a few treasured minutes – lengthy sufficient to obtain alerts, cover kids and lock the doorways; and lengthy sufficient to offer the police extra alternatives to interact and “arrest the attacker earlier than he can slaughter 19 college students and two lecturers,” the Texas Home report stated.
Lawmakers additionally blamed the police response and the failure of faculty officers and others to heed quite a few warning indicators concerning the shooter. Their report says state and federal brokers on the scene had been additionally responsible of the delay in confronting the shooter.
CNN’s Rosalina Nieves Raja Razek, Amanda Musa and Brad Parks contributed to this report.
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