Officer husband of slain Uvalde teacher was disarmed and detained after trying to rush into school 

Testimony on Tuesday revealed an Uvalde police officer – who is also the husband of one of the two teachers killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting – was disarmed and detained after he attempted to enter the scene to save his wife.

According to testimony by Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw, an officer with the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD) was removed from the scene when he tried to rush in after speaking to his wife on the phone and learning she had been shot. 

“We got an officer, Officer Ruiz, whose wife had called him and said she (had) been shot and she’s dying,” McCraw said in front of the Texas Senate. “What happened to him as he tried to move forward into the hallway, he was detained and they took his gun away from him and escorted him off the scene.” 

Officer Ruben Ruiz lost his wife, school teacher Eva Mireles, the day of the shooting at Robb Elementary School when an 18-year-old gunman entered the school and murdered 19 children and two teachers. McGraw says the failure of the police on scene to allow Ruiz to save his wife was only one of many failures that day. 

McGraw said the “abject failure” of the response to the shooting was due to “not only the lack of leadership, but also the misinformation that’s being provided.” 

“What officers were being told was, ‘The subject is contained, the chief is in the classroom or the office, negotiating or talking to the subject. So everyone is treating it, that comes in afterwards, you’re in the hallway and you’re looking at it, and you’re being told this, there’s no reason to discount that,” he said. “Now, certainly if you heard, ‘Well, wait a minute, we’re getting 911 calls from children in the classroom.’ And we didn’t know the timeline.”