Crimson Elizondo, a Texas state trooper, arrived at Uvalde's Robb Elementary within two minutes of a gunman's entering the school and starting his massacre last May. Elizondo is seen in her Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) uniform, handgun drawn, outside the school building, and then in the hallway on body camera footage. She was one of the first of 91 DPS officers to arrive, one of the 376 total law enforcement personnel who went to the school where the shooter was left for 77 minutes – with dead, dying and traumatized victims – before he was stopped. The response to the attack in which 19 children and two teachers were killed has been denounced as an “abject failure.” The school police chief was fired and now seven DPS officers are being investigated for what they did – or did not – do.
Elizondo now is a police officer for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (CISD), where her role is to protect some of the very same children who survived the Robb Elementary shooting, CNN reports. School Superintendent Hal Harrell said that at least 33 DPS officers would be deployed around the district’s eight schools. After initial concern by residents that officers who failed to stop the killing would be tasked with school security, a parent said he had been assured the DPS officers would not have been responders to the shooting. Families of students said, "We are disgusted and angry at Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s (UCISD) decision to hire Officer Crimson Elizondo. Her hiring puts into question the credibility and thoroughness of UCISD’s HR and vetting practices.” Elizondo is one of seven officers whose conduct is being investigated by DPS. She reportedly was not properly equipped and said to investigators that she was not comfortable going inside the school without her gear.