The War of Words Continues in Uvalde

On Tuesday we reported on the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety's forceful, scathing denunciation of the decisions made by local police during the mass shooting in Uvalde. Our story didn't contain one standout piece of information given in testimony before a special state Senate committee in Austin by Col. Steven McCraw: that murdered teacher Eva Mireles' husband, a police officer, tried to save her but "was detained and they took his gun away from him and escorted him off the scene." McCraw said Ruben Ruiz, a police officer for the school district, received a call from his wife, who said "she had been shot and was dying," reports KSAT.

McCraw says that upon getting to the scene, Ruiz tried to force his way into the school and was stopped; McCraw didn't provide details on who stopped him. McCraw himself ended up being a target on Tuesday, with CNN reporting Uvalde's mayor "sharply criticized" DPS and McCraw; the Texas Rangers fall under the DPS umbrella and are heading up the investigation into the shooting. While speaking at a City Council meeting on Tuesday, Mayor Don McLaughlin said McCraw hasn't been providing him with updates on the investigation, and he faulted McCraw for what he has revealed and what McLaughlin perceives to be spin.

"Colonel McCraw has continued to, whether you want to call it ... lie, leak, mislead, or mistake information in order to distance his own troopers and Rangers from the response," McLaughlin said. "There were no less than eight law enforcement agencies present in the hallway leading up to the breach of the door at Robb Elementary School," he continued, per Fox News. "Every briefing, he leaves out the number of his own officers and Rangers that were on scene that day. He leaves out that during this time, every other classroom in the building was safely evacuated." McLaughlin also made clear that the school building would definitely be demolished, saying, "You could never ask a child to go back or a teacher to go back in that school, ever." (More Uvalde mass shooting stories.)