The two teachers who were shot dead along with their students at Robb Elementary School in Uwalde, Texas, on Tuesday, died trying to protect their students after a gunman stormed their classroom, barricaded the doors and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle. according to relatives informed by the police.
Nineteen children aged 9 and 10 were killed in the attack, along with Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia.
Garcia’s nephew wrote on Twitter that his aunt “died with children in her arms, trying to protect them.” He went on to say, “These were not only her students, but her children.”
The 18-year-old shooter was also killed.
As details of the latest massacre that rocked the United States surfaced on Wednesday, grief engulfed the small town of Uwalde with a population of 16,000.
People hug Wednesday at Rob Elementary School. An 18-year-old gunman was also shot dead on the spot, officials said. (Nuri Valbona / Reuters)
The gunman legally bought two AR-style rifles before the attack, shortly after his 18th birthday, and warned on social media minutes before the attack that he had shot his grandmother and would shoot at a school, Governor Greg Abbott said on Wednesday.
The dead include 10-year-old Eliahna Garcia, who loved to sing, dance and play basketball; a fellow fourth-grader, Xavier Javier Lopez, who was looking forward to a summer of swimming; and a teacher, Eva Mireles, with 17 years of experience, whose husband is an employee of the school district police department.
“I just don’t know how people can sell this type of gun to an 18-year-old child,” Eliana’s aunt, Syria’s Arizmendi, said angrily through tears. “What will he use it for, other than that?”
About 30 minutes before the bloodbath, Salvador Ramos posted three posts on social media, Abbott said. According to him, Ramos announced that he would shoot his grandmother, then that he shot the woman, and finally that he would shoot in a primary school.
PHOTOS Society mourns deadly shooting at school:
“Evil has engulfed Uwalde”
Abbot said Ramos, a resident of the community about 135 kilometers west of San Antonio, had no known criminal or mental history.
Seventeen people were also injured in the attack.
“Evil struck Uwalde yesterday. Anyone who shoots his grandmother in the face must have evil in his heart,” Abbott told a news conference. “But it is much worse for someone to kill young children. It is intolerable and unacceptable for us to have someone in the country who would kill young children in our schools.”
WATCH Abbott says the focus should be on mental health, not weapons:
Mental illness is the problem, says the governor of Texas
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says the Robb Elementary shooting was not because an 18-year-old could buy a long gun in the state, but rather because of mental health problems. Investigators said the shooter had no known criminal or mental history in Tuesday’s shooting.
Interrupted press conference
Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is running against Abbott for governor this year, cut short a press conference, calling Republicans’ response to the tragedy “predictable”.
As Abbott finished his speech, O’Rourke approached the stage, pointed to the governor, and said, “This is for you.”
“You are not doing anything. You’re not offering us anything, “O’Rourke told Abbott as a police officer reached out, as if to stop the candidate from storming the scene. Some on stage shouted back at O’Rourke, and Uwalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, a Republican, called him a “sick son of a bitch.”
As officers escorted O’Rourke out of the audience, some of the crowd mocked him as a woman chanted, “Let him talk.” Some people cried.
“It’s up to you until you decide to do something different,” O’Rourke said. “This will continue to happen. Someone must stand up for the children of this country, or they will continue to be killed just as they were killed in Uwalde yesterday.”
WATCH O’Rourke criticizes Abbott’s response:
Democrat Beto O’Rourke Interrupts Texas Gov. at School Shooting Press Conference
Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is challenging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for governor this year, cut off Wednesday’s press conference on the state’s deadly shooting at an elementary school, calling Republicans’ response to the tragedy “predictable.” O’Rourke was escorted as members of his crowd shouted.
The children, victims of the shooting, which killed 21 people, were gathered in a classroom, an official said earlier on Wednesday.
Lt. Christopher Olivares of the Texas Department of Public Safety told CNN that all the victims were in the same fourth grade at Rob Elementary School in Uwalde, Texas.
The gunman barricaded himself in a classroom, “shooting anyone who stood in his way,” he said.
Eventually, law enforcement officers stormed the classroom and killed the shooter. Police and others who responded to the attack also broke school windows to allow students and teachers to escape.
Investigators did not immediately reveal a motive. But in chilling social media posts in the days and hours before the massacre, an account that appeared to belong to Ramos showed pictures of his weapons and seemed to indicate that something was going to happen.
The attack in the predominantly Latin American city of Uwalde was the deadliest school shooting in the United States since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.
Gustavo Garcia-Siler, archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, comforted people in front of the city center, where students were transported after Tuesday’s shooting. (Marco Bello / Reuters)
‘My heart is broken’
After the shooting, families waited for hours for information about their children. In the city center, where some gathered, the silence was repeatedly broken by screams and sobs. “No! Please, no!” A man shouted as he hugged another man.
“My heart is broken today,” Hal Harel, the head of the school district, said Tuesday night. “We are a small community and we will need your prayers to get through this.”
It was the last traumatic moment for a country marked by a series of massacres coming just 10 days after a deadly racist rampage at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
WATCH Biden says the United States can no longer delay arms control:
“Why are we still allowing this to happen?” Biden says after the shooting at a school in Texas
US President Joe Biden called for new gun restrictions on Tuesday night in an address to the nation after 18 children were killed in a shooting at a primary school in Texas.
US President Joe Biden called for new gun restrictions in an address to the nation on Tuesday night.
“As a nation, we must ask ourselves, when in the name of God will we stand up to the lobby with weapons?” When on earth are we going to do what needs to be done? ”Biden asked. “Why are we ready to live with this carnage?”
Uwalde, home to about 16,000 people, is about 120 kilometers from the border with Mexico. Rob Elementary School, which has nearly 600 second-, third- and fourth-graders, is located in a mostly residential neighborhood with modest homes.
The attack came when the school was counting down to the last days of the school year with a series of themed days. Tuesday was supposed to be “Footloose and Fancy”, with students dressed in nice outfits.
WATCH Condolences, respect, shared around the world:
Anger, questions, condolences followed the shooting at a school in Texas
Prominent Americans, President of Ukraine, students in India share anger and sadness over the killings of students and teachers in Texas.
The last of the dark tragedies
Condolences poured out from leaders around the world, including Pope Francis, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Dmitry Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister at war with Russia.
Sports leagues observed a moment of silence ahead of Tuesday night’s games, as did the New York Stock Exchange before the opening bell on Wednesday morning.
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 Santa Fe High School in the Houston area. A year earlier, a gunman in a church in Texas killed more than two dozen people during a Sunday service in the small town of Sutherland Springs. In 2019, an armed man in a Walmart in El Paso killed 23 people in a racist attack on Spaniards.
WATCH The United States is extraordinary in terms of access to weapons, says the senator:
‘What are we doing?’ The US senator asks after the shooting at a school in Texas
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, whose state suffered a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School a decade ago, called on his Senate colleagues on Tuesday after 14 other children were killed in a shooting at a school in Uwalde, Texas. He asked politicians why they were in the Senate at all if they did not want to work to solve what he called an “existential” problem.
The latest shooting came days before the NRA’s annual convention began in Houston.
Abbott and the two U.S. senators from Texas were among the elected Republicans who were scheduled to speak at a leadership forum 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 US gun policy in any significant way are constantly facing obstacles from Republicans and the influence of outside groups such as the NRA.
WATCH Sandy Hook’s father is “overwhelmed with sadness”:
Sandy Hook’s father says families in Uwalde, Texas, will need community support
Jimmy Green’s daughter Anna was killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, when she was six years old. He says community support will be vital to the families of those killed in the Texas school shooting.
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