The San Antonio Express-News reported what several children said about the carnage in their classroom. The Houston Chronicle said that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who opposes gun control, wants the state to spend $50 million in bullet-proof shields.

As Salvador Ramos approached Room 112 in Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School, the teacher and her students heard gunshots.

She told the fourth-graders to get down on the floor or under their desks, and she went to the door to make sure it was locked. Then Ramos fired at the door handle. Rounds from his assault-style rifle shattered the door window and struck the teacher, fatally injuring her as she tried to protect her kids.

“It’s time to die,” Ramos declared as he entered the classroom. “You guys are mine.”

Ramos at one point asked if anyone needed help, and when one child stood up, he shot him.

These details of the first minutes of the May 24 rampage are from a 10-year-old boy who was in the classroom and who has described the scene to his mother and to law enforcement officials.

“Creepy music” blared from Ramos’ phone as the 18-year-old high school dropout opened fired on the class, the boy recalled. His mother, Corina Camacho, said shrapnel struck her son in the leg.

Then Ramos walked to the connected classroom next door, Room 111, and opened fire again.

“He was like going back and forth, playing music,” the mother told the San Antonio Express-News.

The terror continued for over an hour. It would be more than 75 minutes after the first 911 calls before members of a Border Patrol tactical unit went into the classrooms and killed Ramos. By then, 19 students and two teachers — Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia — were dead. Seventeen other people were injured. It isn’t clear which teacher was killed when Ramos shot through the door.

On ExpressNews.com: Morning of chaos: A reconstruction of how the Uvalde massacre unfolded

The Express-News’ account of the early minutes of the rampage is based on interviews with law enforcement sources, state lawmakers, Corina Camacho and civil lawyers who represent surviving children and teachers.

Camacho’s son told his story to the FBI recently. He is one of several witnesses who were interviewed by the FBI, the Texas Rangers or the Texas Department of Public Safety.

The information from the lawyers and law enforcement sources helps shed light on the tragedy and the disastrous police response that followed. Key details remain unknown to investigators as they try to reconcile incomplete or contradictory statements from witnesses and law enforcement officers.

The massacre in the rural town of more than 15,000 is the second-worst mass shooting at a school, after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., which killed 26. President Joe Biden visited Uvalde last week to comfort the families, and in a televised speech days later, he renewed calls for tighter gun restrictions, including a ban on assault-style rifles.

Frozen with fear

The morning of Tuesday, May 24, began like any day near the end of the school year. Some classes at Robb Elementary had just come in from recess. Others had just let out for lunch. Summer break would begin in two days.

Teacher Emilia Marin had propped open a door with a rock to help a co-worker bring in food for an end-of-the-year party from a car in the school parking lot. Then Marin saw a truck crash outside the school’s perimeter fence, said her lawyer, Don Flanary.

Marin went back inside the school to get her phone and report the crash to 911.

When she came back outside, still on the phone, she saw her co-worker flee and heard people at a funeral home across the street yell, “He’s got a gun!”

Marin saw Ramos jump over a fence. She kicked the rock away, pulled the door shut and ran into the school. She huddled under a counter in a classroom.

She heard gunshots, first outdoors, then inside the school. Her 911 call dropped. She grabbed chairs and boxes to hide behind. Frozen with fear, she tried to be still.

Marin received a text from her daughter asking if she was safe.

“There’s a shooter,” Marin typed back. “He’s shooting. He’s in here.”

Then Ramos approached Room 112.

Camacho and one of her lawyers, Stephanie Sherman, said her son described how Ramos shot his way into the classroom and how police at one point opened the door and retreated after he fired at them. Law enforcement sources disputed the latter part of the boy’s account, saying no officer went into the classroom during the initial response.

The officers “were all in the hallway, and when shots were fired, they all ran back to another hallway or outside,” one source told the Express-News.

Another lawyer for the family, Shawn Brown, said the boy related different details to his grandfather. He told the grandfather that his teacher shielded him with her body as he lay on the floor and that Ramos fired at her, killing her and striking him in the leg.

Brown also said the boy told his grandfather that Ramos, after pacing from one room to the other, asked if anyone needed help — acting in the guise of a police officer.

“When one kid stood up, he shot him with the AK,” Brown said, quoting the grandfather. “That may be the reason he thought an officer had come in.”

Investigators are trying to unravel discrepancies in the accounts provided by the traumatized children. Camacho’s son’s account differs somewhat from what other children have told investigators. The inconsistencies could reflect differing vantage points — whether the children were lying facedown or were facing away from Ramos.

Some saw most of the massacre unfold. As their memories return, the children have revealed progressively more and sometimes contradictory details to investigators and family members.

“The kids’ interviews, they’re bad,” said one law enforcement source, referring to the graphic details. “I can’t even imagine the nightmare … that those kids went through.”

Brown said the differing versions simply reflect trauma.

“It’s because of the shock and because of the stress that they went through,” Brown said. “They’re remembering bits and pieces as they go, and it may not be in sequential order. It was such a traumatic experience that their brains are trying to block it out.”

The official account of what happened inside the school has not been fully disclosed because of a criminal investigation by the Texas Rangers, assisted by the FBI, that is being overseen by Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee…

First on the scene

According to law enforcement sources, Uvalde police and Uvalde CISD officers were among the first to arrive. Because it was school district property, responding officers deferred to Arredondo.

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio, whose district includes Uvalde, said last week that Arredondo was not aware of 911 calls from students inside the classroom, who were begging to be rescued.

Arredondo’s six-officer department does not have its own radio communications system. The 911 calls were routed to the Uvalde Police Department, Gutierrez said. Why Arredondo would not have known about the desperate calls from the students is unclear, given that numerous officers equipped with radios were at the scene.

One source said interviews with officers indicated that Arredondo did not have a police radio with him. Another law enforcement source said security video from the school confirms Arredondo did not have a radio.

“He made some phone calls to Uvalde PD” to get information and may have missed the 911 calls from the students, a source said.

On ExpressNews.com: Uvalde schools police chief didn’t receive 911 calls

Also, the fortified, concrete walls of the school interfered with reception of the radios carried by other officers, law enforcement sources said.

At one point, 19 officers were in a hallway outside the classrooms where Ramos had cornered his terrified victims.

“There’s not as much radio traffic as you would think there would be,” one law enforcement source said. “Those inside may not have heard the kids’ 911 calls.”

Because some officers were off-duty or rushed in, they didn’t have body cameras or did not set them to record, further complicating matters for investigators.

Arredondo appears to have been inside the building with some school police officers and Uvalde police officers. Investigators have collected reports from some first responders indicating that Arredondo tried early on to negotiate with the gunman by cellphone, but Ramos did not answer.

As officers planned strategy in the hallway, Arredondo believed the victims were all dead and Ramos had barricaded himself, investigators said. He held officers back to wait for reinforcements and specialized equipment, and the officers on the scene stood down, according to sources.

DPS Director Steve McCraw has said there was “no excuse” for that decision and that the 19 officers should have stormed in and killed Ramos early on to end the bloodshed and give aid to the wounded.

On ExpressNews.com: As Uvalde students waited for rescue, police assumed there was no reason to rush in

Outside, other officers cordoned off the school and barred agitated parents from going inside.

While the school was under attack, Mireles, one of the fourth-grade teachers who was killed, called her husband, Ruben Ruiz. He is a school district police officer, and he rushed to the scene, Uvalde County Judge Bill Mitchell said. Like the students’ parents, he was prohibited from entering the building.

Mireles and Ruiz talked by phone as the fatally wounded teacher took her last breaths.

“She’s in the classroom and he’s outside. It’s terrifying,” Mitchell told reporters after being briefed by Uvalde County sheriff’s deputies who were at the scene.

Radio traffic shows that officers from several federal law enforcement agencies responded, including the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Marshals Service.

Ultimately, members of a Border Patrol tactical unit shot Ramos, who apparently was locked inside one of the classrooms.

Brown, the lawyer for the family of the 10-year-old boy, said the child described how he and a couple of other students got up when they were rescued.

“He said he saw the other kids on the floor,” Brown said, choking back emotion. “He told the grandfather, ‘I got up. My friends didn’t.’”

‘Really bad’ for police

Why the outer door Ramos used to get into the school didn’t lock when the teacher pulled it shut is unknown. One law enforcement source said officials plan to remove that door and the classroom doors for inspection.

A team from the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University went to the school this past week to conduct an assessment of what happened.

The U.S. Justice Department is carrying out a separate review of the police response, at the request of Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin Jr.

“The report is not going to be good,” one source said. “This is really bad for law enforcement.”

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