A teacher who survived the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas last month criticized police officers response to the shooting, calling them “cowards” for failing to do their job.
“After everything, I get more angry because you have a bulletproof vest. I had nothing,” Arnulfo Reyes told “Good Morning America” from his hospital bed. “You’re supposed to protect and serve. There is no excuse for their actions, and I will never forgive them.”
Texas law enforcement is facing backlash for their response to the shooting. Officers waited for more than an hour before confronting the gunman who barricaded himself inside a classroom with the students and teachers.
The decision likely cost the lives of innocent children, delayed vital medical assistance to wounded students and subjected survivors to over an hour of playing dead and further traumatization by confinement with the murderer.
Reyes told Good Morning America that the day of the shooting was suppose to be a good day, “it was our day of awards,” he said. Some of his students chose to go home after the award ceremony but 11 stayed behind to watch a movie– the animated version of “The Addams Family,” in Reyes’ classroom, room 111. Â
Around 11:30 a.m. Reyes said he heard a bang and told his students to get under the table and pretend as if they were asleep. When he turned around he came face-to-face with the gunman.
Reyes was shot twice; one bullet went through an arm and lung, and another bullet hit him in the back. He is currently recovering from injuries, ABC News reported.
Reyes said he could not move after being shot and then the gunman turned his AR-15 rifle on the students. Reyes said the gunman killed all 11 of his students.
Officers could be heard outside the classroom, and a child in the adjoining classroom pleaded for police to help, Reyes said. But he thinks by that time, officers had retreated down a hallway.
“One of the students from the next-door classroom was saying, ‘Officer, we’re in here. We’re in here,'” he said. “But they had already left.”
The gunman shot students and teachers in Reyes’ classroom and an adjoining one, room 112, authorities said.
The gunman killed 19 children in total and two teachers in what was the second deadliest school shooting in the country after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012.
“I feel so bad for the parents because they lost a child,” Reyes said. “But they lost one child. I lost 11 that day, all at one time.”
He slammed local police as “cowards’ for failing to protect his students and vows to not let the deaths of his students and co-workers be in vain.
“I will go to the end of the world to make sure things get changed. If that’s what I have to do for the rest of my life, I will do it,” he said.
