Officials announced on Tuesday that the Texas elementary school where 19 children and two teachers were killed last month will be torn down.
According to KENS, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin made the announcement regarding Robb Elementary during a city council meeting, but he did not say when the school will be demolished.
“You can never ask a child to go back or teacher to go back in that school ever,” the mayor commented.
During the same meeting, the city council unanimously rejected Uvalde school police chief Pete Arredondo’s request for a leave of absence. Arredondo was sworn in as a city council member a week after the May 24 shooting that killed 21 people.
Previously, Arrendondo told the Texas Tribune that he did not bring his two radios as he believed they would weigh him down. He also claimed he spent an hour trying to unlock a classroom door that separated him and the gunman.
However, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw claimed on Tuesday that the gunman was in an unlocked room for 74 minutes before he was fatally shot.
McCraw said efforts to confront the gunman were an “abject failure and antithetical to everything we have learned over the past two decades.” He went on to claim that his agency did not have the ability to immediately take control from local authorities.
According to KENS, Mayor McLaughlin said on Tuesday that he is “fed up” with the lack of transparency from authorities. He went on to claim that Texas Rangers and DPS have never briefed him regarding last month’s mass shooting.
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[Featured image: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong]
