UVALDE, Texas – At least 19 children and two teachers have been killed in a shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday, according to the Texas Department of Homeland Security, an incident that President Joe Biden described as “Butcher” in UVALDE, Texas. a call to lawmakers “to act.”
The tragedy in Uvalde, about 90 minutes west of San Antonio, comes just days after another deadly shooting in Buffalo, New York and amid a rapid rise in incidents of active shooters in the country.
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“When parents drop off their children at school, they have every expectation that they will be able to pick up their child when that school day is over. And there are families who are in mourning right now,” the Texas governor said. . Greg Abbott.
“The state of Texas is mourning them for the fact that these parents will not be able to pick up their children.”
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The murdered students were mostly third- and fourth-graders, according to law enforcement sources. Among them was Amerie Jo Garza, who celebrated her 10th birthday two weeks ago, according to her father, Angel.
“My little love is now flying high with the angels above,” he wrote in a statement to ABC News. “Please don’t take a second for granted. Hug your family. Tell them you love them. I love you Amerie.”
The 18-year-old suspect, Salvador Ramos, a student at Uvalde High School, is also dead, Abbott said, adding that Ramos “shot and killed in a horrible and incomprehensible way.”
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Sources said the gunman first shot his grandmother elsewhere. Authorities initially said the grandmother was killed, but later said she was in critical condition.
He then crashed his car out of school and came out with an AR-15-style rifle, according to various law enforcement sources.
Sources say he legally bought two AR-style rifles on May 22, just two days before the shooting and six days after his 18th birthday. Authorities have recovered the guns, body armor worn by the suspect and numerous magazines and are analyzing the evidence, sources said.
The suspect was immediately confronted outside the building as he approached the school by a police officer from the Uvalde Independent School District, who was shot by the suspect, sources said.
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After that, the suspect entered the school and allegedly opened fire and killed 18 students, who were mostly third and fourth graders, as well as a teacher, sources said.
There, he exchanged gunfire with the UValde ISD officer and the agents of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, some of whom have children attending school, according to sources. Border Patrol officers responded to a request for law enforcement assistance.
Investigators are going through ballistics to determine who fired the shot that killed the suspect.
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A fourth-grader who was at the school at the time described the horror of the shooting in an interview with ABC News. He said the students heard knocks on a window and then the teacher saw the shooter.
“She said, ‘My God, there’s a gun.’ “We just hear all sorts of shots, like non-stop, like the constant shots. And then we’re all scared here. What … on earth fearing for our lives.”
Several social media users interviewed by ABC News said the accused shooter allegedly sent videos and photos of weapons to other users on various social media platforms. Law enforcement has reported and is reviewing screenshots of the suspect’s alleged messages to an Instagram user, who publicly posted them to his account after the shooting.
Abbott also said the shooter made three “posts on social media” about 30 minutes before the Robb Elementary School attack, but a Meta spokesman said “the messages that Governor Abbott described they were private text messages one by one that were discovered after the terrible terrible incident. a tragedy happened “.
According to the governor, Ramos wrote that he would shoot his grandmother, after he had shot the woman, and finally that he would shoot at an elementary school.
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Two police officers who responded were among the injured, Abbott said. They are expected to survive, he said. One of the Border Patrol officers was injured while trying to protect the students and is in hospital recovering, Del Rio industry chief Jason D. Owens told ABC News.
Three adults and three children injured in the Texas Elementary School shooting remain hospitalized Wednesday.
Uvalde Memorial Hospital initially received 13 children as patients. Two of them died and three were taken to San Antonio for treatment, the hospital said. The conditions of the others were not immediately clear. A 45-year-old man was also hospitalized after being shot by a bullet, the hospital said.
San Antonio University Health said it had four patients from the shooting incident: three students and an adult woman. A 66-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl were in critical condition.
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Two adult victims of the shooting, both in critical condition, are also being treated at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, according to an army officer.
Some of the victims of the shooting are children of Customs and Border Patrol officers, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Earlier, the consolidated independent school district of Uvalde had said a shooter was at Robb Elementary School and asked people to stay away from the area.
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“There’s an active shooter at Robb Elementary,” the school district said on Twitter. “Law enforcement is in place. Your cooperation is needed right now so you don’t visit the campus. As soon as more information is gathered, it will be shared.”
There is an active shooter in Robb Elementary. Law enforcement is in place. Your collaboration is needed right now so as not to visit the campus. As soon as more information is collected it will be shared.
The rest of the district is safe.
– Uvalde CISD (@Uvalde_CISD) May 24, 2022
The shooting took place shortly after 11:30 a.m. local time, police said.
The school, which has second, third and fourth graders, informed parents shortly after 2 p.m. that the students had been transferred to Sgt. Willie Deleon Civic Center, the reunion site, and could be picked up.
Father Ryan Ramirez told San Antonio ABC KSAT affiliate that he had gone to the civic center and elementary school trying to find his fourth-grade daughter after the shooting.
“[I’m] just confused and worried. I’m trying to figure out where my baby is, “she told the station.
The Houston Field Division of the Office of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also said it is assisting in the investigation.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been briefed on the situation and the agency “is actively coordinating with federal, state and local partners,” a spokesman said. Customs and Border Protection officers from the area also went to the scene.
The National Center for Counterterrorism Operations believes that “there is no known link to terrorism” at this time, according to a law enforcement bulletin obtained by ABC News.
“Why are you here ?!”
Furious Senator Chris Murphy asks for answers from senators after the Texas school shooting.
“Why are you spending all this time running for the United States Senate … if your answer is as slaughter increases, as our children run to save their lives, we’re doing nothing?” pic.twitter.com/9fkJ13vWGd
– ABC News (@ABC) May 24, 2022
Since 2013, the year after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, mass shootings in the United States, described as shooting incidents in which at least four people are injured or killed, have almost triplicate. There have already been 213 mass shooting incidents in 2022: a 50% increase over the 141 shootings in May 2017 and a 150% increase over the 84 in May 2013. The graph above shows the number of shooting incidents by state. Mobile users: Click here to see our map of mass shootings in the US from Sandy Hook.
The number of people injured or killed does not include the suspect or the perpetrator. These graphs show the number of victims in all the mass shootings since 20 children and six adults were shot dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut on December 14, 2012.
Pierre Thomas, Luke Barr, Jack Date, Nicholas Kerr and Mireya Villarreal of ABC News contributed to this report.
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