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Angeli Gomez says Uvalde, Texas cops threatened her for speaking out

First they handcuffed her, and now, she says they’re trying to shut her up.

A Uvalde mom who was handcuffed after urging police to rescue her kids from the deranged gunman who slaughtered 19 children at Robb Elementary, claims law enforcement has warned her to stop telling her story.

Once the handcuffs were off, Angeli Rose Gomez jumped over the fence and rushed to save her two sons on her own.

Gomez claimed she got a call from someone in law enforcement, who said if she kept speaking out about the botched police response to the massacre, she’d be charged with a probation violation for obstruction of justice, CBS News reported.

A farm worker, Gomez had been at the school earlier in the day for a graduation ceremony, then returned to the fields were she works. About 10 minutes later, she received a frantic call from her mother telling her about the shooting, and she jumped in her car and sped back to the school.

Once there, she and other parents were branded as “uncooperative” by cops standing outside the school while gunshots could be heard coming from inside.

Angeli Rose Gomez told CBS that she had worked her way into the school to retrieve her children.
CBS NEWS

“Right away, as I parked, a US Marshal started coming toward my car, saying that I wasn’t allowed to be parked there,” she recalled. “And he said, Well, we’re gonna have to arrest you because you’re being very uncooperative.”

Gomez said she told him he would have to arrest her, and criticized the phalanx of law enforcement standing around. “Y’all are standing with snipers and y’all are far away, I got to go in there,” she recounted saying. He “immediately put me in cuffs.”

Cops from various agencies held other parents back as they tried to get into the school and begged the officers to do something. After a local officer convinced the marshal to remove the handcuffs, Gomez said, she bolted toward the school, jumping a fence to get inside.

She went first to her son’s classroom near where the fourth graders were attacked, then grabbed her second son from his classroom and ran with them out of the building.

After she shared her story with reporters, she got the threatening call, dangling charges that could upend her probation related to charges filed more than a decade ago.

But Gomez said the judge overseeing her probation told her she did not face new legal problems and that her bravery would be rewarded with a shortened probation.

People visit a memorial at Robb Elementary School.
People visit a memorial at Robb Elementary School on June 2.
Jae C. Hong/AP

The latest controversy surrounding the police response to the shooting came amid ongoing criticism of the school district police chief, Pete Arredondo, who made the decision not to send in a tactical team to confront the 18-year-old gunman during his rampage, even as children inside the classroom repeatedly dialed 911. 

Gomez has been one of the most vocal critics of the police response. 

“I was just thinking that they could have saved many more lives,” she said as she choked back tears. “They could have gone into that classroom and maybe two or three would have been gone.

 Law enforcement, and other first responders, gather outside Robb Elementary School following the mass shooting on May 24.
Law enforcement and other first responders gather outside Robb Elementary School following the mass shooting on May 24.
Dario Lopez-Mills/AP

“They could have done something,” she continued. “Gone through the window, sniped him through the window. I mean, something! But nothing was being done. If anything. they were being more aggressive on us parents that were willing to go in there.”

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