WWALDE, Texas (AP) – An 18-year-old gunman opened fire Tuesday at a Texas elementary school, killing at least 19 children as he walked from classroom to classroom, officials said at the last horrific moment for a country marked by a series from the massacre. The attacker was killed by police.
Two adults were among the dead, authorities said. Gov. Greg Abbott said one of them was a teacher.
The attack on Robb Elementary School Robb in Uwalde, which is heavily Hispanic, was the deadliest shooting in an American school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, nearly a decade ago.
“My heart is broken today,” said Hal Harel, the head of the school district, announcing that all school activities had been canceled until further notice. “We are a small community and we will need your prayers to get through this.”
The attack also came just 10 days after a deadly racist rampage at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, added to the years-long massacre of churches, schools and shops. And the prospects for any reform of national gun regulations seemed as bleak as they were after Sandy Hook’s death.
President Joe Biden seemed ready for battle, calling for new arms restrictions on the nation hours after the attack.
“As a nation, we must ask ourselves, when, for God’s sake, will we stand up to the arms lobby?” When in God’s name will we do what needs to be done? ” Biden asked. “Why are they ready to live with this carnage?”
Many of the injured were rushed to Uwalde Memorial Hospital, where friction staff and relatives of the devastated victims could be seen crying as they left the complex.
The gunman, armed with a bulletproof vest, crashed his car in front of the school before entering. Eric Estrada of the Texas Department of Public Safety told CNN.
He killed his grandmother before heading to school with two military-style rifles he bought for his birthday, according to State Senator Roland Gutierrez, who said he had been informed by state police.
“It was the first thing he did on his 18th birthday,” he said.
Authorities did not immediately reveal a motive, but the governor identified the attacker as Salvador Ramos and said he was a resident of the community about 85 miles (135 kilometers) west of San Antonio.
Ramos has hinted on social media that an attack could come, Gutierrez said, noting that “he suggested the children be careful.”
A border patrol agent who worked nearby when the shooting began rushed to the school without waiting for reinforcements and shot and killed an armed man behind the barricade, police said, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about it.
The agent was injured but managed to leave the school, a law enforcement source said.
School District Police Chief Pete Aredondo said the attacker acted alone.
It was not immediately clear how many people were injured, but Aredondo said he had “several injuries”. Earlier, the Uwalde Memorial Hospital said 13 children had been taken there. Another hospital said a 66-year-old woman was in critical condition.
Rob has just under 600 students enrolled in the primary school, and Arredondo said he serves second, third and fourth graders. He did not specify the age of the children shot. This was the last school week at school before the summer holidays.
Heavily armed law enforcement officers stormed the school, with tactical vests diverting traffic and FBI agents coming in and out of the building.
White House spokeswoman Karin Jean-Pierre said Biden had been informed of the shooting of Air Force One when he returned from a five-day trip to Asia.
Uwalde, home to about 16,000 people, is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the Mexican border. Robb Elementary is located in a mostly residential area with modest houses.
The Uwalde tragedy was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, adding to the grim outcome in the state, which has been the site of some of the deadliest shootings in the United States in five years.
In 2018, a gunman fatally shot dead 10 people at a high school in Santa Fe, Houston. A year earlier, a gunman at a church in Texas killed more than two dozen people during a Sunday service in the small town of Sutherland Springs. In 2019, another gunman at Walmart in El Paso killed 23 people in a racist attack.
The shooting came days before the National Rifle Association’s annual congress began in Houston. Abbott and the two U.S. senators from Texas were among the elected Republicans who were scheduled to speak at a forum for leaders on Friday sponsored by the NRA lobby group.
In the years since Sandy Hook, the debate on gun control in Congress has grown and dwindled. Lawmakers’ efforts to change U.S. gun policy in any significant way are constantly facing obstacles from Republicans and the influence of outside groups such as the NRA.
A year later, Sandy Hook, Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, and Patrick J. Tumi, a Republican from Pennsylvania, agreed on a bipartisan proposal to expand the nation’s history screening system. But as the measure was close to being submitted to the Senate for a vote, it became clear that it would not receive enough votes to overcome the 60-vote hurdle.
Then-President Barack Obama, who put gun control at the center of his administration’s goals after the Newtown shooting, called Congress’s failure to act “a very shameful day for Washington.”
Last year, the House of Representatives passed two bills to expand inspections for the purchase of firearms. A bill would close the door on private and online sales. The other would extend the review review period. Both have faded in the 50-50 Senate, where Democrats need at least 10 Republican votes to overcome a filibuster’s objections.
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Associated Press authors Jake Bleiberg of Dallas, Ben Fox in Washington, D.C. Weber in Austin and Juan Lozano from Houston contributed to this report.
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