Students probably witnessed shooting before their eyes, Former FBI special agent says
A former FBI special agent is calling for a deeper investigation into the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 students and two teachers dead.
Steven P. Berry, who spent 25 years with the FBI, told Newsmax that he believes students in the classroom where the gunfire erupted may have witnessed the entire incident.
“It’s almost surreal, and it’s hard to fathom, but I’m confident that those students in that classroom saw everything that happened,” Berry said. “They’re going to have a traumatic experience for the rest of their lives.”
The FBI is still investigating the shooting, which occurred on May 24, and has so far released little information. Berry, who has investigated similar cases, believes that the agency should dig deeper into the events surrounding the shooting.
“I think the FBI needs to take a closer look at this,” Berry said. “They need to get to the bottom of what happened, because the more they learn, the better equipped they’ll be to help the community, the better equipped they’ll be to prevent something like this from happening again.”
Berry is particularly troubled by the fact that the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was reportedly able to breach the school’s security and make his way to the classroom where the shooting occurred.
“It’s unfathomable to me that someone could have gotten to the classroom before the law enforcement got there,” he said. “I don’t understand how that’s possible. It’s a huge red flag that something was terribly wrong with the security at that school.”
Berry believes that the FBI’s investigation should focus on how the shooter was able to breach the school’s security and whether there were any security protocols in place that failed.
“That’s what I want them to focus on: How did this happen? What happened? And how can we prevent it from happening again?” he said. “You’ve got to learn from this. You can’t just say, ‘We had a bad accident.’ You’ve got to learn from it.”
