19 children and 2 adults killed in Texas school shooting

An 18-year-old gunman opened fire at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday, killing at least 19 children as he walked from class to class, officials say, the deadliest school shooting in decades and the last horrific moment for a country. full of scars. . With a series of massacres.

The attacker was killed by the police.

The death toll also included two adults, officials said. Governor Greg Abbott said one of them was a teacher. The attack on Robbie Elementary School in the Latin American city of Waldeville was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adult students at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December. 2012.

Hours after the attack, families were still waiting for words about their children. Outside the city’s civic center, where families were told to gather, the silence was repeatedly broken by screaming and crying. “No! Გ Please don’t!” one man shouted as he hugged the other man.

“I am heartbroken today,” said Hal Harel, the school district superintendent. “We are a small community and we will need your prayers to resolve this.”

Adolfo Cruz, a 69-year-old air-conditioning repairman, was still out of school at dusk searching for words about his 10-year-old grandson Elijah Cruz Torres.

He went to the scene after receiving a horrible call from his daughter, shortly after the first reports of the shooting. He said other relatives were at the hospital and civic center. The wait, he said, was the most difficult time of his life. “I hope he’s alive,” Cruz said.

The attack comes just 10 days after a deadly racist attack on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, along with a string of mass murders in churches, schools and stores. And the prospects for any reform of gun regulations looked as murky, if not murkier, than after Sandy Hook’s death.

But President Joe Biden was ready to fight, calling for a new arms embargo on the country hours after the attack. “As a nation, when are we going to stand up in the name of God in the name of God? When are we going to do in the name of God what should we do? asked Biden. “Why are we willing to live with this massacre?”

Many of the injured were rushed to Uvalde Memorial Hospital, where staff and family members of the devastated victim wept as they left the compound.

Authorities did not immediately reveal the reason, but they identified the gunman as Salvador Ramos, a resident of the community 135 kilometers west of San Antonio. He said he acted alone.

The attack came as Rob Primary School was counting the last days of the school year with a series of themed days. Tuesday was supposed to be Footloose and Fancy, with students wearing cute costumes and shoes.

The school has about 600 students in the second, third and fourth grades. The vast majority of students are Latino.

State senator Roland Gutierrez said Ramos hinted on social media that he might be the target and said he was notified by state police. He noted that the gunman “suggested that children be treated with caution”.

Before going to school, Ramos killed his grandmother with two military-style rifles he bought her for her birthday, Gutierrez said. “It was the first thing he did on his 18th birthday,” he said. Other authorities later said the grandmother had survived and was being treated, and her condition was unknown.

A spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, Travis Considine, said the attack began at 11:30 am, when a gunman crashed into a car outside the school and broke into the building. A resident who heard the sound of the crash called 911 and two local police officers exchanged fire with the shooter.

Both officers were shot, though it’s not immediately clear where this confrontation took place on campus, or how long it took for more officials to arrive at the scene.

Meanwhile, teams of Border Patrol agents were on their way to the school, including 10 to 15 members of a SWAT-like tactical and counter-terrorist unit, said Jason Owens, a senior regional representative for Border Patrol.

A border patrol agent, who was working there when the shooting started, rushed to the school without waiting for reinforcements and shot and killed a gunman behind the barricade. Talk about it.

The officer was injured but managed to leave the school, a police source said. Owens confirmed that the officer received minor injuries, but did not provide details of the confrontation.

He said some regional agents have children at Robb Elementary. “We have children from the border police who attend this school. “It affected everyone at home,” he said.

It is not known at this point what he did to cause the injuries, but police chief Pete Arendo said “several people were injured”. Earlier, Uvalde Memorial said 13 children had been taken there. According to another hospital, the 66-year-old woman is in critical condition.

Uvalde, home to about 16,000 people, is about 120 kilometers from the Mexican border. Robb Elementary is a modest home in most residential areas.

The Uwald tragedy was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, raising the horrific rate in the state, which was the deadliest shooting scene in the US in the past five years.

In 2018, a gunman shot and killed 10 people at Santa Fe High School in Houston, Houston. A year earlier, a gunman at a Texas church had killed more than two dozen people during a Sunday service in the small town of Sutherland Springs. In 2019, at Walmart in El Paso, another gunman killed 23 people in a racist attack on Spaniards.

The shooting took place a few days before the National Gun Association’s annual convention in Houston. Both Abbott and US senators from Texas were among the Republican elected officials scheduled to speak at Friday’s Leaders Forum, sponsored by the NRA lobby.

Over the years since Sandy Hooke, the gun control debate in Congress has ebbed and flowed. Attempts by lawmakers to change US gun policy in any significant way are constantly thwarted by Republican blockades and the influence of outside groups like the NRA.

A year after Sandy Hooke, Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, and Patrick J. Tumi, a Republican from Pennsylvania, negotiated a bipartisan proposal to expand the country’s background check system. But the event failed during a Senate vote, without enough support to cross Philibuster’s 60-vote threshold.

Then-President Barack Obama, who held the center of his administration’s gun control after the Newtown shooting, called the Congressional failure “a pretty embarrassing day for Washington.”

Last year, the House passed two bills to expand background checks on firearm purchases. A bill would close the hole for private and online sales. The second would extend the background check review period. Both Senates suffered 50-50 votes, with Democrats needing at least 10 Republican votes to overcome opposition to Philbuster.

May 24, 5:03 pm Updated with the latest death toll.

On May 24th at 7:35 pm. Updated to reflect the latest data from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

On May 24th at 9:33 pm. All text has been updated.