911 call and the moment that shooter was killed. cnn s shimon prokupecz pushed for straight answers during a press conference on friday. reporter: you say there were 19 officers gathered in the hallway or somewhere. what efforts were made to try and break through that door you say was locked? what efforts were the officers making to try and break through either that door or another door, to get inside that classroom? none at that time. reporter: why? the on-scene commander at the time believed it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject. reporter: you have people who are alive, children who are calling 911 saying, please send the police. they are alive in that classroom. there are lives that are at risk. that s not protocol, is it? we re well aware that. reporter: right. why was this decision made not to go in and rescue these children? again, the on-scene commander considered a barricaded subject and that there was time and there were n
911 dispatcher. at one point she said at least eight to nine people are still alive. this is key, this is critical, the child was letting the dispatcher know there was still hope. later another caller called. and when that caller called, it could be heard over the 911 line, gunshots, gunshots. when that first child called again, she said, please send help now. and it took at least an hour and 20 minutes from the time of the initial call before that 18-year-old shooter was killed. and this is raising a lot of questions. people were already hurting, as these families prepare to bury their children. but now they re asking what took so long, why didn t the members of law enforcement who were in the hall or wherever they were go inside to stop the threat? adrienne taking us through
children? again, the on-scene commander considered a barricaded subject and that there was time and there were no more children at risk. obviously, obviously, based upon the information we have, there were children in that classroom that were at risk and it was in fast still an active shooter situation and not a barricaded subject. the incident commander has been identified as uvalde school police chief pedro pete arredondo. he made two statements to the press but has not spoken publicly since. with the benefit of hindsight, where i m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision, it was the wrong decision. there is no excuse for that. when president biden travels to uvalde tomorrow he s going to meet with victims families and other community members there. cnn s adrienne brotas has more.
that devastating timeline, thank you so much for your reporting there in uvalde. joining me now is juliette kayyem, a cnn national security analyst. she also served as an assistant secretary at the department of homeland security. juliette, great to see you, thanks for making time. of course. we just listened to adrienne. we started hearing all these details yesterday and so many people are just shaking their heads. we know that officials in uvalde have acknowledged that the commander made the wrong decision. you ve called this an abject failure. what happened here? does this just come back to training? no, because the training is actually the opposite. this is the weird thing about it. if the training had said, we ll stand by and weigh all the factors and see who s alive and who s dead, then you would just say he made a bad judgment call, in other words he calculated the risk. the training they received, and we know this now, they ve