US Uvalde victim's family feels betrayed by officials withholding details from that day: NBC News

NEW YORK - Javier Cazares is haunted by the 30 minutes or so that passed after his 9-year-old daughter was shot and before law enforcement officers finally confronted the gunman firing an AR-15 inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, US state of Texas, reported NBC News on Sunday.

"She wasn't shot in the very beginning. She was shot somewhere in the middle. If they had gone in 30 minutes, 40 minutes" earlier, Cazares said in an interview, "maybe she could still have been alive."

A total of 73 minutes passed before law enforcement stopped the 18-year-old armed with an assault rifle.

"The loss has been worsened, according to Cazares, by the refusal of people in power to take responsibility for their failures, to fill in the details for the grieving parents who need to know more about what happened each minute of that deadly day, to own up to fateful mistakes and remove those who made them, to make sure the families get the support they need when they need it, and to change gun laws," noted the report.

"The first couple months, you know, it still seemed unreal," Cazares was quoted as saying. "And now, it's like betrayal."

This week, the families of the 19 children and two teachers who were slaughtered May 24 last year are marking that day of death, but when the commemoration is done, they will go back to agonizing about how long law enforcement waited before finally confronting the gunman, said the report.