Medical examiners who conducted autopsies reported that the victims' injuries were so severe they would not have survived, Broome County District Attorney Gerald F. Mollen said.
"We definitively can say nobody was shot after police arrival, and nobody who had been shot could have been saved even if the police had walked in the door within the first minute," Mollen said.
The prosecutor's comments came at a news conference yesterday, an hour before officials released a list of names and home countries of the victims.
Four Chinese were among those killed, and a Chinese student was also shot in the arm and leg but survived, officials said. The other victims came from Haiti, Pakistan, the Philippines, Iraq, Brazil, Vietnam, and the United States.
The first 911 calls came in at 10:30 a.m., police Chief Joseph Zikuski said. The callers spoke broken English, and it took dispatchers 2 minutes to sort out what was happening, he said.
Patrol officers arrived at 10:33 a.m., five minutes before a wounded receptionist called police to report a gunman in the building, Zikuski said. Police had earlier said it was that call that brought them to the immigration center.
When police arrived at the scene, the gunfire had stopped, so they believed there was no "active gunman" in the center and decided to wait for the SWAT team to arrive, Zikuski said.
The SWAT team entered the building until 11:13 a.m., 43 minutes after the first call to police.
"I'm not sure why they wouldn't have gone in there if the shooting was already done," said Kent Moyer, president of California-based World Protection Group, which offers protection services for corporate, commercial, industrial, entertainment, residential, and retail clients. "What is happening all across the board in law enforcement is they've switched the tactic. They're not relying on waiting until the SWAT team gets there."
Moyer said many law enforcement agencies conduct rapid-response training where the uniformed patrol officers are taught that "once they have sufficient backup, that they go in prior to the SWAT team getting there."
