The Border Patrol agent who helped breach the classroom and fatally shot the gunman behind the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas was inches away from being the gunman’s 22nd fatal victim.
On Thursday, Fox News reporter Bill Melugin shared a photo of the hat the Border Patrol tactical unit (BORTAC) officer was wearing when he breached the room. The stitching of the hat is noticeably frayed, apparently from a grazing bullet.
“NEW: This is the hat the elite, veteran BORTAC Border Patrol agent was wearing when he breached the classroom with a tactical team and engaged/killed the Uvalde school shooter, a CBP source tells me,” Melugin tweeted. “Graze wound to head. Many BP agents in Uvalde have kids at the school.”
Washington Examiner reporter Anna Giaritelli shared another photo of the head wound the agent sustained. A gash in the man’s head is visible with either staples or stitches over the wound.
“The Border Patrol tactical agent who took down the Uvalde shooter sustained a wound to the head after being brazed by a bullet,” Giaritelli tweeted. “He was shot in the leg, but has been discharged from the hospital, per CBP sources.”
Giaritelli further reported the BORTAC agent was also wounded by shrapnel to his leg but CBP sources said he has been discharged from a hospital.
The BORTAC agent remains unnamed, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources told Fox News that the veteran agent is assigned to the Del Rio border sector in Texas.
Investigators are still working to understand the law enforcement response to the shooting. The incident lasted between 40 and 60 minutes, during which the gunman killed 19 children and two adults and wounded 17 other people before he was stopped.
The Associated Press reported multiple parents begged law enforcement officers outside the school to either go in or let them go in themselves to stop the gunman. Video showed an officer pinning one man to the ground as several other officers with plate carriers and rifles urged parents to stay behind a cordon line outside the school.
The BORTAC agent and other law enforcement officers eventually did enter the school and locate the classroom in which the gunman had barricaded himself. A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told the Associated Press that responding officers had trouble getting into the classroom and ultimately had to get a school staff member to provide a key to enter the locked room.
