By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Del Rio Police Department Chief Frank Ramirez sent four officers to assist Uvalde law enforcement Tuesday as soon as he learned of the tragic school shooting in that city.
“While it was still an active situation, we had four (officers) on the way, and they are still there,” Ramirez told the 830 Times in a telephone interview Tuesday night.
“I believe it was, 20 or 25 minutes after the situation started, we had people on the way,” the chief added, saying the four officers were dispatched to Uvalde just before noon on Tuesday.
The mass shooting in Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School has now become the worst in Texas history, with 21 confirmed dead as of 9:30 p.m. Tuesday – 19 students and two adults killed, according to a Texas Department of Public Safety official quoted on CNN.
Ramirez said he dispatched his officers because he knew local law enforcement officers in Uvalde would need all the help they could get.
“It’s not so much that they would need help with the actual situation, such as storming the building, but help with the aftermath, with the public coming, the grieving families and everything else. I knew they would need help with crowd control, traffic, and that’s what I really wanted them to focus on, but if they got there and it was still going on and they were assigned somewhere, that would not be a problem, either, but the main thing was to give local law enforcement a hand so they could do their jobs,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez said the situation in Uvalde is one of local law enforcement’s worst nightmares.
“This is pretty much as bad as it gets. Of course my heart just dropped when I heard about it, and we’ve offered any help we can to Uvalde. We got our officers over there; we extended a hand from Del Rio and said, you tell us what you need, and we’ll do everything we can to help. I can only imagine what they’re going through over there. It’s just horrific,” Ramirez said.
He said the officers sent to Uvalde would stay there until they are released and noted if more officers are needed, they will be rotated in and out.
“They may need help with things like patrol and other routine law enforcement work while they finish with the scene. They’ve got help there, but they’re going to need to do a lot of investigative work, and as they’re doing that, they need people to do the regular work of local police, blocking off streets, things like that. That’s what we’re trying to help with,” Ramirez said.
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