Laurel Duggan, DCNF

Law enforcement officers pepper-sprayed and handcuffed parents who tried to enter Robb Elementary School to retrieve their children during a Monday mass shooting, a mother who was at the scene told The Wall Street Journal.

Angeli Rose Gomez drove 40 miles to the school, where her children are in second and third grade, upon hearing about the shooting and found police standing outside the building, according to the WSJ. Gomez and other parents urged the officers to enter the school with increasing intensity until authorities began detaining them.

“They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere,” she told the WSJ.

A Uvalde mother was PLACED IN HANDCUFFS by Federal Marshalls on scene for attempting to enter the school to get her child. Another man was tased for trying to get his kid off a bus. All while Salvador Ramos was alive inside killing kids https://t.co/LqqhuIMGlP pic.twitter.com/CNIUZ2GYhk

— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) May 26, 2022

Police tackled a father to the ground and used pepper spray on another man, Gomez told the WSJ. Federal marshals handcuffed Gomez and told her she was being arrested after she demanded they go into the building, but she had police officers she knew convince the marshals to remove the cuffs, she told the WSJ.

Gomez eventually ran into the school, got her two kids and sprinted away, according to the WSJ. After the shooting ended, she saw police use a taser on a father approaching a bus to retrieve his child.

“They didn’t do that to the shooter, but they did that to us. That’s how it felt,” Gomez told the WSJ.

Law enforcement officers engaged the gunman as he entered the classroom, but the shooter barricaded himself inside for between 30 and 60 minutes, during which time he shot and killed 19 students and two teachers, according to multiple sources. The police did not breach the classroom until about an hour after the shooter entered, when they got a staff member to unlock the door with a key, according to the Associated Press.

The Uvalde Police Department and the local Border Patrol office did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

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