Uvalde mom handcuffed for trying to save her kids faces alleged police harassment

According to local news, Angeli Rose Gomez said "the other night we were exercising and we had a cop parked at the corner like, flickering us with his headlights." Gomez said she moved her sons out of the house so they wouldn't be harassed by cops constantly "passing by, stopping, parking."

Angeli Rose Gomez has been critical of the police response to the Uvalde shooting that saw 19 children and two teachers massacred. On the day of the shooting she drove 40 miles to get to her kids, only to arrive at the school and be detailed by a US Marshall who said she was "intervening in an active investigation."

Gunman Salvador Ramos entered the school at 11:33 am on May 24 and police arrived two minutes later. Ramos then entered classroom 111 and adjacent room 112 and began firing, including at children. The police retreated without trying to breach the likely unlocked doors.

A total of 77 minutes passed between Ramos' entry and his eventual neutralization at the hands of an off-duty border patrol agent who arrived on the scene. Within that window, Angeli Rose Gomez landed on the scene and rushed to save her children but was detained and handcuffed by a US Marshall while other parents were tackled and peppersprayed.

"The police were doing nothing," Gomez later said, "They were just standing outside the fence. They weren't going in there or running anywhere," Reports have shown that the police were in fact doing very little. While Gomez was handcuffed Uvalde School Police Chief Arredondo arrived on the scene, forgot his radio, then tried in vain to find a master key to the doors of the classrooms from a safe distance.

Gomez convinced local police to free her and she broke into a run, jumped a fence, and ran inside to rescue her children. While Arredondo stalled and Gomes saved, other children slowly bled out who would have otherwise lived if they'd been reached sooner.

Gomez claimed Police started harassing her earlier in June by threatening her with a charge for a probation violation or with obstruction of justice for doing media interviews. A judge assuaged her that her decades-old charge couldn't be used against her in that manner but it unnerved her nevertheless.

Gomez has joined other Uvalde parents in focusing criticism on Arredondo and according to The Daily Mail, she and 15 other Uvalde parents have retained a lawyer, Mark Di Carlo, who has said Arredondo's behavior and protection after the incident is an "indication of corruption or wrong-doing" in the district.