Lawyer: Uvalde teacher did not leave door open that gunman used to enter Robb Elementary School

A teacher at Robb Elementary School had propped open a door to carry food from a car to a classroom last Tuesday, but she closed it after realizing that a gunman was loose and heading toward the school, her San Antonio lawyer said.

Don Flanary said the teacher, who is not being identified out of safety concerns, called 911 to report an accident near the school involving a black truck, which turned out to be driven by gunman Salvador Ramos, 18.

Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Friday that Ramos, a Uvalde High School dropout, fired at nearby funeral home employees after he had crashed the pickup. McCraw said Ramos then walked over to the campus, fired shots from an assault-style rifle at several windows and entered the building through the open door.

Ramos killed 19 students and two teachers and injured 17 more people in two adjoining classrooms, making it one of the worst mass shootings ever in a school. He was in the rooms for more than an hour before Border Patrol tactical officers broke in and killed him.

McCraw told reporters Friday that the teacher propped open the door about the time Ramos crashed the truck and that the teacher called 911.

McCraw said the door “wasn’t supposed to be propped open, it was supposed to be locked. And certainly the teacher that went back for her cellphone propped it open again. So that was an access point that the subject used.”

Flanary said the story he got from his client mostly matches the timeline McCraw gave at a Friday news conference, but the lawyer wants to make clear that the teacher did not leave the door open.

“She saw the wreck,” Flanary said. “She ran back inside to get her phone to report the accident. She came back out while on the phone with 911. The men at the funeral home yelled, ‘He has a gun!’ She saw him jump the fence, and he had a gun, so she ran back inside.

“She kicked the rock away when she went back in. She remembers pulling the door closed while telling 911 that he was shooting. She thought the door would lock because that door is always supposed to be locked.”

Flanary added that the teacher even remembers pulling and holding onto the door — which has a horizontal push bar — while on the phone with 911. At one point as she headed back to her classroom, the 911 call dropped and she texted family that the gunman was inside the building and then that she could hear police.

Late Tuesday, DPS spokesman Travis Considine confirmed part of Flanary’s account.

“We did verify she closed the door,” Considine said. “The door did not lock. We know that much, and now investigators are looking into why it did not lock.”

A law enforcement source familiar with the investigation said surveillance video and audio verifies that the teacher removed the rock keeping the door open, then closed it.

“She slammed it shut,” said the source, who requested anonymity because the source does not have authority to speak with the media.

Flanary and the source said a person exiting through the door might not be able to tell if it was locked.

The source said investigators are trying to determine if the door was unlocked earlier or if its lock was not working because the gunman used the same door to get into the school, go down the hallways and into adjoining rooms 111 and 112. In the rooms, full of fourth-graders, he took advantage of a delayed police response and shot and killed his victims.

The source said at least one other school employee has reported to federal agents and DPS that at least one other door in the building did not lock, and investigators are looking into that report. Investigators also have received reports that another entry/exit door into the building was open during school hours, the source said.

Flanary said that when the teacher saw the gunman, he threw a bag over the fence and he had a rifle slung over his body. As she retreated and closed the door and headed back to her classroom, she had 911 on the phone. At some point, the 911 call dropped, and dispatchers did not call her back, Flanary said.

The teacher even tried to use the intercom to reach others in the school office, but she got nothing. “Silence. No one answered,” Flanary said.

The lawyer said the teacher hid and didn’t call 911 back because she wanted to keep quiet so the gunman would not find her. She had turned off her phone’s ringer.

“She was very scared,” Flanary said. “Immediately when she got in, she heard the popping of gunshots. Then, there was a change in the popping sounds, like shooting inside (the building).”

“All she could do was hide under a counter,” Flanary said. “She thought it was a matter of time before he came and got her. He would have seen her if he’d come in.”

Flanary said the teacher told him that her wing of the L-shaped building had just dismissed students for lunch before she went to the parking lot; otherwise, there might have been more victims because the gunman fired at the building from outside before going in.

Flanary added that the teacher could hear police inside the building about 11:40 a.m. and that texts he reviewed from her phone confirm that.

“She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could tell they were voices of police,” Flanary said. “She was still hunkered down.”

She did not leave her classroom until police came for her about 12:10 p.m., Flanary said. The lawyer and the source said the woman had to go to the hospital because of anxiety.

“She said they don’t have a resource officer,” Flanary said, using the term for school police officers. “She doesn’t know if they have one assigned to (multiple) schools, but there certainly was not one there that day.”

Parents of students were at the school earlier that Tuesday to attend award ceremonies, two days before the school year was to end.

guillermo.contreras@express-news.net | Twitter: @gmaninfedland