The father of a school shooting victim in Uvalde, Texas, told The Washington Post that he and others wanted to storm the elementary school to retrieve their children as they heard gunshots from inside.
Javier Cazares said he arrived at Robb Elementary soon after hearing something was going on at his daughter’s school, and he told the Post he was joined near the building’s front door by several other men who had children at the school.
“There were five or six of [us] fathers, hearing the gunshots, and [police officers] were telling us to move back,” Cazares told the newspaper. “We didn’t care about us. We wanted to storm the building. We were saying, ‘Let’s go’ because that is how worried we were, and we wanted to get our babies out.”
The Washington Post reported that hours later, Cazares learned his daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, 9, had been shot and killed.
According to Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw, the gunman was in the school between 40 to 60 minutes before law enforcement forcibly entered and killed him.
Video posted to social media appears to show frustrated and distraught parents and other adults outside the school clashing with law enforcement officers, urging the officers to go inside and get the gunman or let them go inside themselves.
The gunman was in a standoff with law enforcement officers for about a half-hour after firing on students and teachers, Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican whose district includes Uvalde, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, citing a briefing he was given.
“And then [the shooting] stops, and he barricades himself in. That’s where there’s kind of a lull in the action,” Gonzales said. “All of it, I understand, lasted about an hour, but this is where there’s kind of a 30-minute lull. They feel as if they’ve got him barricaded in. The rest of the students in the school are now leaving.”
Read More: Texas school shooting at Robb Elementary