A mother of two Robb Elementary School students reportedly ran into the school to rescue her children while law enforcement stood outside the building under siege.
Angeli Gomez told CBS Thursday she frantically tried to rescue her children from the Uvalde, Texas, school where a gunman ended up killing 21 on May 24.
The mother of two boys at the school — one in second grade, the other in third grade — had been at the school in the morning and posed for a photo with her sons. She told CBS News Correspondent Lilia Luciano she didn’t want to be in the photo because she had just come from the farm field where she worked and was covered in dirt and sweat.
She expressed gratitude her boys convinced her to be in the photos, because if things had worked out differently, it may have been the last photo they were all in.
After she returned to work, she got a call from her mother alerting her to the active shooter situation at the elementary school. Luciano said Gomez told her she drove back to the school at a speed approaching 100 miles per hour.
“Right away, as I parked, U.S. Marshalls started coming towards my car saying I wasn’t allowed to be parked there,” Gomez said, “and we’re going to have to arrest you because you’re being very uncooperative.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to arrest me because I’m going in there,” Gomez reportedly responded. “And I’m telling you right now, I don’t see none of y’all in there. Y’all are standing with snipers and y’all are far away. If y’all don’t go to go in there, I’m going in there.” The distraught mother recounted how the marshals immediately placed her in handcuffs.
Local officers from Uvalde assured the marshals they knew her as a mother of a student at the school and convinced them to uncuff her, Gomez said. A Wall Street Journal report noted the Marshals Service denied their deputies handcuffed anyone that day.
“As soon as they uncuffed me, I jumped that first gate fence,” said Gomez. “I went to my son’s class and I knocked on the door.” She told the teacher police were bolt cutting the fence to get her. Gomez explained the teacher asked if she thought they had time to get out. “Yes, you have time,” Gomez replied, adding, “I’m going to run for my other son.”
She said her other son’s teacher didn’t want to open the door when she knocked on it. She said police removed her from the school but she noticed her son’s class was being evacuated and ran back in. Gomez reportedly claimed she saw no officers in the school when she returned, even as shots were still being fired. She reportedly grabbed her other son and they ran outside.
“There was not one officer in the school when I ran for my second son,” the disgusted mother said, adding police seemed more intent on keeping parents out than going into the school to get the shooter.
The Uvalde mother claimed a police officer called her and threatened her with a probation violation from a decade-old charge if she kept talking to the media. Gomez only gave the interview after a judge informed her that she wouldn’t be punished for speaking to the media, according to the CBS report.
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