WATCH: Uvalde Teacher Gives Inside Account of School Shooting

Nicole Ogburn, a fourth-grade teacher at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, described in detail the tragic school shooting that left 19 students and 2 teachers dead. Ogburn spotted the gunman outside the school seconds before he began firing his weapon into her classroom.

The video interview featured in a report by the Daily Mail offers an inside account of the shooting that ended after a hastily formed group of law enforcement officers gained access to the gunman barricaded behind a locked steel door.

Ogburn told the Daily Mail about how the locking mechanism works on the exterior door to the school that the shooter used to enter the building. She says the door has a push-style lock. She describes the outside of the door as having a door handle that requires a key.

The issue surrounding whether the door was left open has received significant attention after a teacher was initially accused by the Texas Department of Public Safety of having left the door propped open. As reported by Breitbart Texas, authorities later acknowledged that information was not true.

Ogburn said a rock was usually nearby to prop the door if needed to go outside for a quick trip to a vehicle. She also stated the push bar on the inside of the door sometimes would not return to fully lock.

Ogburn then described how the incident unfolded from her vantage point in a corner classroom close to where the shooter approached the building. She said her students attended an awards ceremony earlier in the day and were inside the classroom watching a movie.

She then told the Daily Mail she heard noises that sounded like a shovel being banged against a wall. When she looked through the classroom window, she saw the shooter and described him as having “dark hair, dark clothes, it looked like he was carrying something, and I saw him have a…he had a gun propped up.”

Ogburn went on to explain in detail how the shooter fired his rifle several times through her classroom window. She said the windows are above her height so the bullets fired must have struck the ceiling. She described how she and the students sought refuge by hiding in the classroom and praying.

She placed four calls to 911 to report her observations using a smart watch. Several of the calls were unsuccessful in reaching the operator. She speculated that a weak cell signal or the distance between her watch and paired phone may have contributed to the failures.

When she successfully managed to reach the 911 operator, Ogburn says she told them, “I’m a fourth-grade teacher at Robb Elementary and there is an active shooter in my building, please, please hurry!”

After being asked by the operator to stay on the line, she whispered, “No I can’t, I don’t want him to hear me,’ and ended the call.

For longer than 30 minutes, Ogburn says she heard gunfire. According to a timeline provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety, during most of this time, the gunman was locked behind a classroom door after firing at police who had entered the building two minutes behind the shooter.

She went on to praise the reaction of her students despite their fear, telling the Daily Mail, “The kids were frightened. As a child who is nine or ten years old having to endure that traumatic situation, I can’t even imagine. They were brave. I’m proud of them.”

Ogburn then described how police knocked on her classroom door and identified themselves. She says she looked through a window in the door and noticed the officer’s uniforms. She says the police told her to open a classroom window and evacuate the building.

She and another teacher in her classroom followed instructions and helped the children to a neighboring funeral home. She later used text message alerts from a Raptor cell phone application, used to activate and track lock-down status. She determined that the time between when the lock-down and the safe evacuation to the funeral home was approximately 37 minutes.

Ogburn said that earlier in the morning, her students had asked her if they could play outside the building. That request came moments before the shooter arrived. She told the Mail, “By that time, however, it was only 11:21am, and too early to let the students out for lunch, so she asked the students to wait at least 15 to 20 minutes more.”

She went on to say, “It was also a sweltering hot day, and she didn’t ‘want to be out in the heat for any longer than was necessary.” Her decision may have saved their lives.

Ogburn spoke about recent school lock downs and explained some were the result of “bail-outs” due to border smuggling. As reported by Breitbart, migrant smugglers being pursued through the community frequently run from authorities after abandoning their vehicles when being pursued by law enforcement in and around school campuses. Uvalde is approximately 60 miles from the U.S.-Mexico Border.

When asked about blame, she said, “As for me, I don’t want to blame anybody but the person who came into my school and did this.”

“It’s not fair, in a world of panic and terror, and until you are in that position where you don’t know, where, like your mind is going everywhere, you can’t judge anybody that was in this situation, the one person that did it was the gunman,” she emphasized.

“He’s the one that came in there and he killed my friends, and he killed those kids,” she added.

Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol.  Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.