Mom who raced into school to save kids claims police used probation threats to keep her from speaking out

A frustrated Uvalde mother who’s been speaking out against law enforcement’s inaction during last week’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School was reportedly threatened with a probation violation for speaking to the press.

“She’s on probation for some charges from about a decade ago, and she received a call from someone in law enforcement telling her that if she keeps talking to media, or if she keeps sharing her story, that she might face some kind of violation for obstruction of justice,” CBS News‘ Lilia Luciano reported Thursday.

Because of the threat, “she was holding back from sharing her story until now,” Luciano said, adding that when the judge presiding over her case heard about the threat, he “told her that she was brave and that her probation would be shortened.”

“So that gave her the courage to talk to us,” according to Luciano.

And with that courage, Angeli Rose Gomez, the mother of two boys, is now telling the full story, and it’s an incredible one that involves her rushing straight to the school after hearing about the mass shooting, only to be put in cuffs for allegedly being “very uncooperative” and threatening to run into the school to find her sons.

Watch:

“Right away as I parked, [a] U.S. Marshall started coming toward my car saying that I wasn’t allowed to be parked there. And he said, well, we’re gonna have to arrest you because you’re being very uncooperative,” Gomez told Luciano in the clip above.

“I said, well, you’re gonna have to arrest me because I’m going in there, and I’m telling you right now I don’t see none of y’all in there. Y’all are standing with snipers and y’all are far away. If y’all don’t go in there, I’m going in there. He immediately put me in cuffs.”

Uvalde Police Department officers, to their credit, then apparently told the U.S. Marshall to uncuff Gomez. As soon as she was uncuffed, she then darted off into the school to do their jobs for them.

“As soon as they uncuff me, I jumped that first gate fence, and once I jumped it, I went to my son’s class and then knocked on the door,” she said.

Once she’d determined he was safe, she ran off in search of her other son, retrieved him, and brought him out as well.

Throughout the whole ordeal, she reportedly encountered zero law enforcement officers within the school.

“There was not one officer inside the school while I ran to my second son’s class. There was not one officer,” she said.

The entire time, she could still hear more gunshots going off.

“You could hear the gunshots. It was still active. The gunshots were still active. They  [law enforcement] were not in there. There was no one in there. If anything, when I pulled up, my car was closer to the school than where the snipers and everybody that was laying on the ground were,” she explained.

When asked how she’d felt when she’d learned that law enforcement had waited 75 minutes before taking action, she grew emotional.

“I was just thinking that they could have saved many more lives. They could have gone into that classroom and maybe two or three would have been gone, but they could have saved their whole class. They could have done something — gone through the windows, sniped them through the window, but nothing was being done,” she said.

“If anything, they were being more aggressive on us parents that were willing to go in there. And, like, I told one of the officers, I don’t need you to protect me. Get away from me. I don’t need your protection. If anything, I need you to go in there with me to go protect my kids. And if anything, they were being more aggressive on us. They’re more [concerned with] on keeping us back than getting into that school.”

Gomez’s remarkable story is yet another dent in local law enforcement’s already battered reputation.

The Uvalde Police Department, in particular, has faced intense criticism for allegedly doing nothing as victims of the mass shooter kept calling 911 begging for help.

The Texas Department of Public Safety is also under fire for reportedly smearing a Robb Elementary School teacher by claiming she’d left a door open for the mass shooter, Salvador Ramos, to get inside the school.

Vivek Saxena

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