AT LEAST 21 KILLED AT TEXAS SCHOOL
18 kids, 3 adults shot; 18-year-old gunman also dead
UVALDE, Texas — An 18-year-old gunman opened fire Tuesday at a Texas elementary school, killing at least 18 children, officials said, and the gunman was dead.
The death toll also included three adults, according to state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who said he was briefed by state police on the fatalities. But it was not immediately clear whether that number included the assailant.
It was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. grade school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, almost a decade ago. And it came just 10 days after a gunman in body armor killed 10 Black shoppers and workers at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in what authorities say was a racist attack.
Federal law enforcement officials said the death toll was expected to rise. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release investigative details.
The gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde with a handgun and possibly a rifle, Gov. Greg Abbott said. Officials did not immediately reveal a motive, but the governor identified the assailant as Salvador Ramos and said he was a resident of the heavily Latino community about 85 miles west of San Antonio.
A Border Patrol agent who was nearby when the shooting began rushed into the school without waiting for backup and shot and killed the gunman, who was behind a barricade, according to a law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about it.
The agent was wounded but able to walk out of the school, the law enforcement source said. Abbott said the shooter was likely killed by police officers but that the events were still being investigated. The school district’s police chief, Pete Arredondo, said that the attacker acted alone.
“Pray for the lost, their families, and Uvalde,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said in a tweet.
It was not immediately clear how many people were wounded, but Arredondo said there were “several injuries.” Earlier, Uvalde Memorial Hospital said 13 children were taken there. Another hospital reported a 66-year-old woman was in critical condition.
Robb Elementary School has an enrollment of just under 600 students. Arredondo did not provide ages of the children who were shot. This was the school’s last week of classes before summer break.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden was briefed on the shooting on Air Force One as he returned from a five-day trip to Asia. Biden was scheduled to deliver remarks
Tuesday evening at the White House.
Uvalde is home to about 16,000 people and is about 75 miles from the border with Mexico. Robb Elementary is in a mostly residential neighborhood of modest homes.
The tragedy in Uvalde was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, and it added to a grim tally of mass shootings in the state that have been among the deadliest in the U.S. over the past five years.
In 2018, a gunman fatally shot 10 people at Santa Fe High School in the Houston area. A year before that, a gunman at a Texas church killed more than two dozen people during a Sunday service in the small town of Sutherland Springs. In 2019, another gunman at a Walmart in El Paso killed 23 people in a racist attack.
The shooting came days before the National Rifle Association annual convention was set to begin in Houston. Abbott and both of Texas’ U.S. senators were among elected Republican officials who were the scheduled speakers at a Friday leadership forum sponsored by the NRA’s lobbying arm.
In the years since Sandy Hook, the gun control debate in Congress has waxed and waned. Efforts by lawmakers to change U.S. gun policies in any significant way have consistently faced roadblocks from Republicans and the influence of outside groups such as the NRA.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who came to Congress as a representative of the congressional district where Sandy Hook Elementary School is located, begged his colleagues to pass legislation that addresses the nation’s gun violence problem.
In an impassioned speech, Murphy took to the floor of the Senate and demanded that lawmakers do what they failed to do after 26 students and educators were killed in Newtown.
The Democrat urged colleagues to find a compromise.
“Our heart is breaking for these families. Every ounce of love and thoughts and prayers we can send, we are sending,” Murphy said. “But I’m here on this floor to beg to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues. Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.”
A y e a r a f t e r S a n d y Hook, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., negotiated a bipartisan proposal to expand the nation’s background check system.
However, as the measure was close to being brought to the Senate floor for a vote, it became clear it would not get enough votes to clear a 60-vote filibuster hurdle.