WALDE, Texas – A gunman killed at least 19 children and two adults Tuesday at a rural Texas primary school, a state police officer said in the deadliest shooting at an American school since the Sandy Hook primary school massacre a decade ago.
The killings took place shortly before noon at Rob Elementary School, where second- to fourth-graders in Uwalde, a small town west of San Antonio, were preparing to begin their summer vacation this week. At least one teacher was among the adults killed and several other children were injured.
The gunman, identified by authorities as an 18-year-old man attending a nearby high school, was armed with several weapons, officials said. He also died on the spot, they said.
“He shoots and kills terribly, incomprehensibly,” Governor Greg Abbott told a news conference.
As terrified parents in Uwalde waited for information about their children’s safety and law enforcement officials raced to unite how the attack took place, the mass shooting deepened the national political debate on gun laws and gun proliferation. Ten days earlier, a gunman fatally shot dead 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store.
“It’s just evil,” Ray Chapa, a resident of Uwalde, said of Tuesday’s killings, using swear words. Mr Chapa said his nephew was at the school when the shooting took place, but was safe. He was waiting to receive an answer from relatives and friends about the other children’s conditions, browsing Facebook for updates. “I’m afraid I will know many of those children who were killed.”
Across the street from the school, state soldiers were scattered across the school lawn, and an ambulance was idle with flashing lights. Adolfo Hernandez, a longtime Uwalde resident, said his nephew was in a classroom near the site of the shooting.
“He actually witnessed his little friend being shot in the face,” Mr Hernandez said. My friend, he said, was shot in the nose and just fell, and my nephew was devastated.
In a brief address to the White House on Tuesday night, President Biden became emotional as he reflected on the attack and called for action, but did not advocate a specific policy or vote.
“It just sucks,” he said of the types of weapons that are readily available in the United States and used in mass shootings. “Where, for God’s sake, is our backbone, the courage to do more and then face the lobbies?” It’s time to turn that pain into action. ”
Mr Biden later added: “May the Lord be near the broken-hearted and save the broken-hearted, for they will need much.”
The shooting took place on Texas Election Day, when voters across the state headed to the ballot box for the primary, which will pave the way for the November election as the state and nation are torn by political divisions over race, immigration and abortion. .
After the deaths became known, events at Robb Elementary School immediately evoked shocking memories of the devastating 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut, which killed six staff members and 20 children, some as young as six. Six years later, a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Ambulances gathered near the scene of the shooting. Credit … Dario Lopez-Mills / Associated Press
Lydia Martinez Delgado said her niece Eva Mireles, a fourth-grade teacher at the school, was among those killed in the riots. Ms. Mireles has been a teacher for 17 years, her aunt said, and she was a “much-loved,” avid tourist, and she was proud to teach mostly Latin students. “She had fun at the party,” said Ms. Martinez Delgado.
To many, the gravity of the tragedy seems to be compounded by its arrival so soon after the deadly massacre of black shoppers at a grocery store in Buffalo, one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent American history. It was the deadliest shooting in the United States this year since Tuesday’s Uwalde killings.
Mr Abbott said the shooter was a resident of the same county where the shooting took place, that he attended a high school there and that he acted alone. He entered primary school with a gun and possibly a rifle, the governor said.
It was not immediately clear whether the shooting took place in one classroom or in several, and officials did not reveal the names or ages of the students killed or the teacher. At least three children – a 9-year-old and two 10-year-olds, one in critical condition – were taken to University Health Hospital in San Antonio for treatment.
Officials were investigating whether the gunman, identified as Salvador Ramos, targeted the school or happened to be there, according to a law enforcement official, who asked for anonymity to describe the investigation, which he warned was still ongoing. The gunman appeared to have crashed into a school barrier before entering, the officer said. At least two law enforcement officers who tried to collide with the shooter were injured in the shooting, not seriously, the officer said.
Marsha Espinoza, an assistant secretary of the Homeland Security, said at least one U.S. Border Patrol agent was injured after responding to a shooting at Rob Elementary School. “Upon entering the building, agents and other law enforcement officers faced fire from the site, which was barricaded inside,” she wrote on Twitter.
Shortly before the massacre, a 66-year-old woman was shot in her apartment in Uwalde, the official said, and was later transported to a hospital in San Antonio with gunshot wounds. The officer said the woman appeared to have been the shooter’s grandmother and had been shot before the school shooting; both shootings and the connection between them remain under investigation.
The shooting happened shortly after 11:30 a.m. For most of the afternoon, while rumors were circulating, tortured parents were instructed in the area to stay away from the school. “Please don’t take students at this time,” he instructed parents in the school district, directing them to a local civic center. “Students must be counted before they can be released into your care.
Parents and relatives fought for all kinds of information, as the news of a shooter at the school became the realization that so many children had been killed.
Ryan Ramirez told KSAT in San Antonio that he could not find his daughter, a fourth-grader at Rob Elementary School, when he showed up at the school or at a downtown collection point. “Nobody tells me anything,” he said, adding, “I’m trying to figure out where my baby is.”
Even before much became known about the armed man, his motives or details about the weapons he used, the killings threw the debate on gun control and the rights of the Second Amendment back into the forefront of national attention.
An employee of the municipal court lowered the flag of Texas to half. Credit … Christopher Lee for The New York Times
Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut and an advocate for gun control legislation, said: “I think everyone here will be rocked to the core.” He added: “I have no idea how a community can handle this. There is no way to do this well. Your community is never the same again. “
The National Rifle Association will hold its annual meeting in Houston, which begins on Friday. Mr Abbott is on the list of prominent Republicans to appear, along with former President Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz.
“Today is a gloomy day,” Mr Cruz said in a statement. In messages posted on Twitter, he said the nation had “seen too many of these shootings”, but did not immediately call for any specific policy proposals to help prevent mass killings.
Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat whose efforts to legislate past checks on gun purchases were blocked in 2013, said: “It doesn’t make sense at all why we can’t do sensible things and try to prevent some of that. from to happen. “
Robb Elementary, a brick school building near the end of the city center, serves more than 500 students, mostly between the ages of 7 and 10. Approximately 90 percent of the students are Hispanic, according to district records, and almost all of the others are white. A sign hanging from the school reads “Welcome!” and “Welcome!” to the school logo, heart.
In the neighborhood around the school, more than 40 percent of residents have lived in the same house for at least 30 years, according to census data. And more than a quarter of Uwalde’s 15,000 residents are children, well above the national average. More than a third live on or just above the federal poverty line.
Joaquin Castro, the US representative for Texas, described Uwalde on Twitter as “a wonderful, cohesive community.”
The report was provided by Mike Baker, Nicholas Bogle-Burroughs, Emily Cochrane, Jesse Fortin, Robert Gebeloff, Jesus Jimenez, Alice Lucpat, Eduardo Medina, Sarah Mervosh and Michael D. Sheare.
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