Gunman ‘kills teacher and 14 pupils’

AT least 14 pupils and one teacher are believed to have been killed in a primary school shooting in Texas yesterday.

The gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School, where pupils are aged five to 11, in the small town of Uvalde.

State governor Greg Abbott said the gunman was an 18-year-old from the town who entered the school with a handgun and may also have been carrying a rifle.

It was reported that Salvador Romas, a student at the nearby Uvalde High School, was later killed in a shoot-out with police.

Mr Abbott said Ramos went into the school armed with a pistol and possibly a rifle. ‘He shot and killed horrifically, incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher,’ Mr Abbott said.

In addition to the 15 confirmed deaths, police said there were an unspecified number of injuries, including a 66-year-old woman and a ten-year-old girl, who were reported to be in a critical condition.

A hospital in the nearby city of San Antonio reported that pupils had been brought there for treatment.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman said officers had ‘immediately responded to the scene to provide support, including medical aid’.

It added that they were ‘actively coordinating with federal, state, and local partners and will continue to provide the department’s full support’. There was a heavy police presence around the school yesterday, with officers in heavy vests diverting traffic and FBI agents coming and going from the building.

The incident comes ten years after the deadliest school shooting in the US, when a 20-year-old gunman killed 26 children and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Just last week, ten people were killed in another mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in a racially motivated attack.