Cody Briseno: Uvalde funeral worker saw Salvador Ramos FIRST, feels guilty he couldn't stop him
UVALDE, TEXAS: A funeral worker from Uvalde said that cops stopped him from entering Robb Elementary School as he rushed towards the building after seeing Salvador Ramos entering it. Cody Briseno claimed that he and his co-worker were about eight to 10 feet away from where Ramos crashed his pick-up truck in a ditch. He offered to help the teenager initially. Briseno was the first to come face-to-face with the deranged gunman
He said that he soon noticed Ramos was carrying an AR-15 rifle and had an "evil look" on his face as he moved towards the school. Briseno said that when he tried to rush into the school, a cop asked him where he was headed. "I'm going in and try to stop them," Briseno recalled telling the officer. "I told him that [Ramos is] already inside the school." But the cop allegedly ordered him to stay back.
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Speaking of Ramos, Briseno told NBC News, "I see him crawling out the passenger window. I tell him, "Hey man, are you OK? Are you alright?"" Briseno said Ramos then pulled out an AR-15 assault rifle from his truck. "At that moment, he looks back at me with this evil look, and I see that rifle," Briseno recalled. He then warned his co-worker that Ramos had a gun.
"'He was shooting at both of us," Briseno said. "I could just hear ricochet. He was aiming that barrel right at me and my coworker." Briseno then called his wife and asked her to bring him his gun as he ran towards the school. He was eventually stopped by the cop. Ramos ended up slaughtering 19 children and two teachers inside the school. Briseno said he had to bury some of the victims. "My intention was to stop him, and I feel guilty, man, because I couldn't stop him," he said. "It always plays in my head. I loaded those caskets down."
A deadly massacre unfolded at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde on May 24 when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos barricaded himself inside a classroom and slaughtered 19 students and two teachers. Police faced sharp criticism for allegedly failing to stop the shooting quickly enough and come to the victims' rescue on time. In fact, a victim bled to death as she waited for police to come to the rescue, a first-responder allegedly told her mother. The child reportedly waited for nearly an hour for cops to arrive, but eventually succumbed to her injuries possibly because of the delay. The first-responder reportedly claimed the child may have lived if the police had been quicker. It was reported that they did not breach the school for more than 90 minutes after arriving on the campus where Ramos was ruthlessly killing the children. Ramos was ultimately shot dead by an off-duty Customs and Border Protection agent from an elite tactical unit.
Meanwhile, Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo was sworn in as a member of the city council on Tuesday, May 31, without a ceremony. Pete has been under criticism for his handling of the Robb Elementary school shooting. He was in command during law enforcement’s response to the massacre. Pete, 50, was slammed after he reportedly held back officers from breaching a classroom at the school and confronting Ramos, who killed 21 people before he was gunned down. Arredondo reportedly held officers back because he “believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject." He apparently thought the children were not at risk.