John Berman Grills Texas Police Official About Reports of Cops Not Entering School During Shooting

Questions have arisen about the exact timeline surrounding the Texas elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas this week that left more than 20 dead, and a new interview from a Texas official did not clear up those looming questions.

A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Safety appeared on CNN on Thursday morning and was pressed by John Berman to provide more accurate details about law enforcement’s response to the incident, but could not. The spokesman, Chris Olivarez, insisted however that there was an “immediate response” from officers, despite reports that it took approximately 40 minutes to enter the school after the shooter barricaded himself in a classroom. Police eventually breached and killed the gunman.

“Right now we do not have an accurate or concrete timeline to provide to, say the gunman was in the school for this period, so we want to provide that factual information once we’re able to obtain that,” spokesman Chris Olivarez told Berman in an interview aired on CNN Newsroom.

Berman pressed for more details, though Olivarez refused to commit to a timeline just yet.

“I do understand, but there was a period of time when the gunman was in the school and there were law enforcement officers on scene, and those law enforcement officers that were here during that period were not going in, correct?” Berman asked.

According to Olivarez, two officers did enter the school as the gunman entered, and then a special

response team was called to the scene. This would be when the reported delay in action would have occurred, but Olivarez said officers were evacuating students and teachers, even breaking windows to get them out of the building.

“You had other officers trying to evacuate children and teachers by breaking windows around the school trying to pull children and teachers from those windows, trying to evacuate them to preserve any further loss of life, so there was immediate response, but, again, trying to establish exactly a timeline. We’re still working on that right now,” the spokesman said.

Following the interview, co-host Jim Sciutto noted, “Deliberately, it seemed, unclear answers there because we do know some things already about the timeline.”

At a Wednesday press conference addressing the shooting, Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw said the school was breached by tactical officers after 40 minutes or so, possibly an hour, though he also could not give an exact timeline while the situation is being investigated.

A Wednesday Associated Press report on Wednesday has also kicked up controversy and earned pushback, describing onlookers urging police to enter the school.