HOUSTON, May 28 (Reuters) – Members of the National Rifle Association (NRA), the main pro-firearms lobby in the United States, voted to renew their confidence in longtime leader Wayne LaPierre on Saturday, four days after the Uvalde massacre.
The association held its annual meeting in Houston, about 450 km from the site of the shooting which occurred Tuesday in an elementary school where an 18-year-old young man armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle killed 19 children and two teachers.
Even before the controversy linked to this massacre, the powerful lobby had been shaken by cases targeting its leaders, accused of having diverted millions of dollars for personal ends and to buy the silence of former employees.
In a show of hands on Saturday, a resolution supporting Wayne LaPierre’s past, current and future leadership was overwhelmingly approved by members of the nonprofit, which has five million members. Only a handful of participants voted against the resolution.
During this time, Uvalde, the investigators were trying to determine the errors committed by the police and were in particular trying to find out why about twenty police officers remained for nearly an hour outside the room where panicked children were hoping to escape. ‘assistance.
This delay is at the heart of the investigation led by the Minister of Public Security, who also wonders about the motive for the attack insofar as the killer, Salvador Ramos, had neither criminal record nor known history of mental illness.
At least two children dialed the 911 emergency number from two classrooms after the killer broke in, said Col. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
“He’s in room 112,” whispered a girl on the phone at 12:03 p.m., more than 45 minutes before the intervention of a US Border Patrol team, which occurred at 12:51 p.m. in this school in Uvalde, a town of 16,000 inhabitants located west of San Antonio.
The same girl told the 911 operator “Please send the police now” at 12:43 p.m., and again four minutes later.
According to Steven McCraw, the police commander on the scene believed that Salvador Ramos was barricaded inside and that the children were no longer in immediate danger, giving officers time to prepare an assault.
“In hindsight (…) of course, it was not the right decision,” said Steven McCraw. “It was the wrong decision, period.”
(Report Arathy Somasekhar Houston, Brad Brooks, Gabriella Borter and Kristina Cooke Uvalde; French version Elizabeth Pineau)