A teenage gunman has killed at least 19 children and two adults after storming into an elementary school in Texas, officials have said, the latest bout of gun-fueled mass killings in the United States and the nation’s worst school shooting since Sandy Hook a decade ago.
The carnage began when the 18-year-old suspect, identified as Salvador Ramos, shot his own grandmother, who is in a critical condition, authorities said.
Police said he fled that scene and crashed his car near the Robb elementary school in Uvalde, a town about 80 miles (130km) west of San Antonio. There he launched a rampage that ended when he was killed, apparently shot by police. The school year was due to end on Thursday.
The motive was not immediately clear and it is believed he acted alone.
Law enforcement officers “engaged” the suspect when they saw him emerge from his crashed vehicle carrying a rifle and a handgun. But the gunman nevertheless managed to charge into the school building and open fire, Texas department of public safety (DPS) Sgt Erick Estrada said on CNN.
The gunman wore body armor and had hinted on social media of an upcoming attack, Estrada said. According to Texas state senator Roland Gutierrez, the suspect headed to the school with two military-style rifles he had purchased on his birthday.
Speaking from the White House hours later, US president Joe Biden urged Americans to stand up to the politically powerful American gun lobby, which he blamed for blocking enactment of tougher firearms safety laws.
“As a nation, we have to ask, ‘When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?’” Biden said on national television, suggesting reinstating a ban on assault-style weapons and other “common sense gun laws”.
Biden ordered flags flown at half-staff daily until sunset on Saturday in observance of the tragedy.
The first victim was identified by family as Eva Mireles, a teacher of 17 years who taught fourth-graders at Robb Elementary. Mireles’ aunt, Lydia Martinez Delgado, told the New York Times her niece was was shot and killed by the gunman while trying to protect her students.
Delgado said Mireles was in her early 40s, married with one child and was an avid hiker who took pride in teaching. “She was the fun of the party,” she added.
In the hours after the shooting, relatives turned to social media in a desperate attempt to find their children.
Adolfo Cruz, a 69-year-old air conditioning repairman, waited outside the school on Tuesday night as the sun set, hoping for word on his 10-year-old great-granddaughter, Elijah Cruz Torres, whose whereabouts remained unknown to family.
While he waited outside the school Tuesday night, his family was at the hospital and civic center waiting for any potential word on her condition. “I hope she is alive,” Cruz told the Associated Press. “They are waiting for an update.”
On social media, pictures of smiling children were posted, their families begging for information. Condolences and expressions of grief poured in from across the US on Tuesday evening.
“My heart is broken today”, said Hal Harrell, the school district superintendent. “We’re a small community and we’re going to need your prayers to get through this.”
The massacre was the 27th school shooting this year in the US, according to Education Week. And it came a little more than a week after 10 people were killed in a supermarket in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo, New York, which is being investigated as a racially motivated hate crime, and a gunman attacked a Taiwanese Presbyterian church in California, killing one and injuring five.
Nicole Hockley, whose son died in the Sandy Hook attack 10 years ago, said she knew the “unspeakable” pain that the parents of the victims were feeling and called on politicians to take action on gun control.
“How many children have to die before politicians stop caring as much about their political careers as they do about their constituents and the lives of the children? These shootings are everywhere,” she wrote in USA Today.
In his address to the nation, Biden said: “I’m sick and tired. We have to act and don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage.
Biden, who lost his young daughter in a car crash and a son to cancer, said: “How many scores of little children … witnessed what happened [and saw] their friends die as if they’re in a battlefield for god’s sake? They’ll live with it for the rest of their lives … beautiful, innocent second, third, fourth graders.
“To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. There’s a hollowness in your chest, you feel like you’re being sucked into it and you’re never going to be able to get out.”
Barack Obama, who failed to persuade the then Republican-controlled Senate to introduce basic gun control laws after the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012, said: “May God bless the memory of the victims, and in the words of scripture, heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.”
Republican leaders in Texas faced intense scrutiny following the shooting over years of opposing gun control measures and pushing to expand gun rights. Some of the deadliest mass shootings in the US in recent years have taken place in the state, including an El Paso Walmart shooting in 2019 that left 23 people dead in what is considered one of the worst attacks on Latinos in modern US history; a Sante Fe school shooting in 2018 that killed 10 people; and a 2017 church shooting in Sutherland Springs that claimed 26 victims.
Both governor Abbott and senator Ted Cruz are scheduled to speak at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Houston later this week, along with Donald Trump.
Texas legislators enacted a new pro-gun law last year allowing most residents of the state to openly carry guns without having to get permits or complete training. Abbott celebrated it as “the strongest second amendment legislation in Texas history”. Texas lawmakers have repeatedly fought to ensure the state has some of the least restrictive gun ownership policies in the country.
The GOP minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, who has for years prevented Democrats from enacting gun control measures, said he was “heartbroken” on Tuesday, but made no comment about gun control.
Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, criticized some in Congress for offering “hollow words after shootings while opposing all efforts to save lives”, adding: “It is time for all in Congress to heed the will of the American people & join in enacting the House-passed bipartisan, common sense, life-saving legislation into law.”
“We’re devastated by this horrific act of gun violence that will forever traumatize the Uvalde community,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, a grassroots organization that is part of Everytown.
“School shootings are not acts of nature, they’re man-made acts of inaction, of cowardice, of corruption by all lawmakers who refuse to pass laws proven by data to stop preventable, senseless shootings like in Uvalde. We cannot and will not accept a reality in which our children aren’t safe in schools or their communities.”
Rena Estala, a volunteer with the Texas chapter of Students Demand Action, said in a statement: “We are heartbroken for everyone impacted by this senseless act of violence in a predominantly Latinx community. School is the last place where kids should have to worry about gun violence. We need leaders at every level to prioritize gun safety now.”
Additional reporting by Ramon Antonio Vargas
