New audio from an emergency 911 call released on Wednesday captured a 10-year-old girl pleading with the dispatcher to “please get help” while trapped in a Uvalde, Texas, classroom with the gunman who killed 19 of her classmates and two teachers.
The call from Khloie Torres, obtained by CNN, further highlights the failure by police to quickly respond to the scene at Robb Elementary School, as officers took almost an hour to storm the classroom.
Khloie, now 11, survived the massacre.
Whispering to the dispatcher, Khloie can be heard asking police to come to the school quickly, saying: “There's a lot of dead bodies.”
At 12.10pm, she told the dispatcher: “I'm in classroom … 112.
“Please send help.”
It was one of three times she desperately called 911 asking for help.
At 12.15pm, she told the operator that her teacher, Eva Mireles, had been shot but was alive, and asked for an ambulance. Mireles later died and was one of two educators who were killed.
Two minutes later, she asked: “How far are y'all away?”
By that point, about 400 officers had arrived at the scene but had yet to confront the gunman.
The many police departments that responded to the scene faced sharp criticism following the shooting — the school's police force has been suspended and police leaders, as well as the city and school district, have been named in federal charges.
Police said they had mistakenly thought the suspect was barricaded and not actively shooting.
One officer, who was at the scene for more than 20 minutes, was not aware that children were injured.
Khloie later told police she had used her teacher's phone to make the emergency call and that her father had taught her “how to handle these situations”.
