Husband of slain Uvalde teacher was detained while trying to save her, official says

• A Robb Elementary School teacher called her husband, a school district police officer, after she was shot.
• Ruben Ruiz ran into the school but was stopped and had his gun taken away, a Texas official said Tuesday.

The husband of a slain Uvalde teacher, who is a school district police officer, was detained while trying to save her, authorities told a Texas Senate hearing on Tuesday.

Eva Mireles, a fourth-grade teacher at Robb Elementary School, called her husband Ruben Ruiz moments after she was shot by the gunman who attacked the school last month, Texas Department of Public Service Director Steve McCraw told the state Senate.

"We got an officer whose wife called him and said she'd been shot and she's dying," McCraw said, according to WFAA.

"He tried to move forward into the hallway. He was detained, and they took his gun away from him and escorted him off the scene."

McCraw did not say who detained Ruiz, or when and how long the phone call took place. The Texas Department of Public Service did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Mireles was one of two teachers at Robb Elementary School who were killed in the May 24 attack, which was the deadliest school shooting in the US in a decade. Nineteen students were also killed. All the victims had been barricaded into two connected classrooms.

The Texas Senate hearing came one day after surveillance footage from inside Robb Elementary School released by law enforcement showed that officers never tried to open a door to the two lassrooms while the shooter was inside.

The gunman was in the school for around 78 minutes before a US Border Patrol tactical team entered the classrooms with a key and killed him, authorities said.

Law-enforcement officers have been heavily criticized for their botched response to the shooting and for changing their story of what happened more than a dozen times.

Ruiz is a Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District officer. The couple shares a teenage daughter, Adalynn Ruiz, who posted a tribute on social media following her mother's death.