UVALDE, Texas –
The death toll from a Texas elementary school shooting has risen to 18 children and three adults, a state senator said.
Senator Roland Gutierrez said he was briefed by state police on the latest fatalities at Robb d’Uvalde Elementary School, a very Latino community about 85 miles (135 kilometers) west of San Antonio.
Three people injured in the attack are hospitalized in serious condition, Gutierrez told The Associated Press.
THIS IS A LATEST NEWS UPDATE. The previous story of AP follows below.
UVALDE, Texas (AP) – An 18-year-old gunman opened fire on a Texas elementary school on Tuesday, killing at least 14 children and a teacher and injuring others, Gov. Greg Abbott said, and the man died.
It was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. elementary school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, nearly a decade ago. And it came just 10 days after a gunman with gunfire killed 10 shoppers and black workers at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in what authorities say was a racist attack.
Federal law enforcement said the death toll was expected to rise. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the details of the investigation.
The gunman entered Robalde d’Uvalde Elementary School with a pistol and possibly a rifle, 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 very Latino community about 85 miles (135 kilometers) west of San Antonio.
A Border Patrol officer who was nearby when the shooting began rushed to the school without waiting for a backup and shot and killed the gunman, who was behind a barricade, according to a officer of the order who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak. about this.
The officer was injured but was able to leave the school, police sources said.
Abbott said the shooter was probably killed by police officers, but that the facts were still being investigated. School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo said the assailant acted alone.
The massacre of young children was another frightening moment for a country marked by an almost incessant series of mass killings in churches, schools and shops. And the prospect of any reform of the nation’s arms regulations seemed at least as weak as after the Sandy Hook deaths.
Uvalde’s gunman “shot and killed, horribly, incomprehensibly, 14 students, and killed a teacher,” the governor said, adding that two officers were also injured, but that he was expected that they survive.
“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 injured, but Arredondo said there were “several injuries”. Earlier, Uvalde Memorial Hospital said 13 children were taken there. Another hospital reported that a 66-year-old woman was in critical condition.
Robb Elementary School has an enrollment of just under 600 students and Arredondo said it serves second, third and fourth graders. He did not provide the ages of the children who were shot. This was the last week of school class before the summer break.
A heavy police presence surrounded the school on Tuesday afternoon, with heavy-duty vests diverting traffic and FBI agents coming and going from the building.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden was informed of the shooting at Air Force One on his return from a five-day trip to Asia. Biden was scheduled to make statements Tuesday night at the White House.
Uvalde is home to about 16,000 people and is the seat of the government of the county of Uvalde. The city is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the Mexican border. Robb Elementary is located in a mostly residential neighborhood of modest homes.
The Uvalde tragedy was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, and added to a serious count of mass shootings in the state that have been some of the deadliest in the United States in five years.
In 2018, a gunman shot dead 10 people at Santa Fe High School in the Houston area. A year earlier, a gunman in 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 annual National Rifle Association convention in Houston began. Abbott and the two U.S. senators from Texas were among the elected Republican officials who were the scheduled speakers at a Friday-led leadership forum sponsored by the NRA.
In the years since Sandy Hook, the arms control debate in Congress has grown and diminished. Legislative efforts to change U.S. weapons policy in a significant way have consistently faced Republican blockades and the influence of outside groups such as the NRA.
A year after Sandy Hook, West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Patrick J. Toomey negotiated a bipartisan proposal to expand the country’s background check system. But as the measure was about to be tabled in the Senate for a vote, it became clear that it would not get enough votes to overcome a 60-vote hurdle.
Then-President Barack Obama, who had made gun control a central focus of his administration’s goals after the Newtown shooting, described the lack of congressional action as “a rather embarrassing day for Washington.”
Last year, the House passed two bills to expand background checks on gun purchases. An invoice would have closed a loophole for private and online sales. The other would have extended the background review period. Both languished in the 50-50 Senate, where Democrats need at least 10 Republican votes to overcome objections to obstructionism.
——
Associated Press writers Jake Bleiberg in Dallas, Ben Fox in Washington, Paul J. Weber in Austin, and Juan Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.