We’ve noted a number of times that early accounts of school shootings are subject to the “fog of war” – chaotic uncertainty about what is happening, factual claims that turn out not to be true and more. That is ending up to be the case in the Uvalde shooting even more than I expected. The initial story was that the shooter was confronted by and exchanged gunfire with a school police officer and then exchanged gunfire with two municipal police officers just after he had entered the school. Body armor was a key part of why the shooter came out on top in those engagements. An account I read early yesterday said that each of those three officers received gun shot wounds – a fact that stands in contrast to the idea that they just ran for cover and didn’t do their job.
But now it seems like basically none of that happened.