Uvalde hearing live updates: ‘Not enough training was done’

Texas Director of Public Safety Steven McCraw sought to clarify some confusion over whether the exterior and interior doors used by the Uvalde gunman to enter Robb Elementary School were locked — and whether officers even needed keys to breach the classroom where the gunman had barricaded himself.

According to McCraw, the door to the classroom containing the gunman could not be locked from inside, meaning it was likely unlocked for the duration of the shooting.

“I have great reasons to believe [the door] was never secured,” he said.

McCraw later said it appears that officers on the scene never checked whether the door to the classroom was unlocked, even as they waited for additional equipment to breach it and worked to secure a set of keys.

“How about trying the door and seeing if it’s locked?” McCraw said he would ask the officers who responded first.

Regarding the gunman’s entry into the building, McCraw confirmed previous reporting that a teacher at one point propped a door open but later closed it before the gunman arrived. He did not clarify how or why the door closed but remained unlocked.

“The only way you can lock these exterior doors in the West building … the only way to do that is from the outside. You can’t do it otherwise,” McCraw said. “So when [the teacher] knocked the rock out, it closed securely, but there’s no way for her to tell that the door was unlocked. The only way to know that the door is unlocked is to go out, close the door, OK, then try it.”