Live Updates: 14 Students, 1 Teacher Dead in Texas School Shooting
"Gov. Greg Abbott, who announced the death toll, said the gunman was also dead. It was the deadliest elementary school shooting since the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Conn.
A gunman opened fire at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, killing 14 children and a teacher, in the deadliest shooting at an elementary school since the devastating attack at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.
Police officers are believed to have killed the gunman, Gov. Greg Abbott said at a news conference. Mr. Abbott later said that the gunman had been a student at a nearby high school.
Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, declared that “the people that are here aren’t totally crazy, and if they can’t see that we need to do something and still protect our Second Amendment rights, then we’re denying a reality that’s happening far too often.”
Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a centrist holdout, said he would not support ending the filibuster to pass gun safety legislation. “You would think there would be enough common sense” to pass legislation without it, he said. Mr. Manchin, a Democrat, added, “The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity.”
Vice President Kamala Harris delivered remarks on the tragedy from an event in Washington, D.C. “Our hearts keep getting broken,” she said. “Enough is enough. As a nation, we have to have the courage to take action and understand the nexus between what makes for reasonable and sensible public policy to ensure something like this never happens again.”
Two adults who were injured in the shooting were taken from Uvalde to Brooke Army Medical Center, a U.S. Army hospital at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. They were in critical condition, the hospital said on Twitter.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this month that gun deaths in the United States reached the highest number recorded in 2020, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 45,000 Americans died in gun-related incidents that year, half of which were suicides. The gun homicide rate was the highest reported since 1994.
George Santizo moved from Austin to Uvalde around a year ago to open an auto body shop. He said that Uvalde is so small that even though he recently moved there, he recalls seeing the gunman around town. “In this town, everybody knows everybody,” Mr. Santizo said.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
The 18-year-old gunman who the authorities said killed 14 students and a teacher at Robb Elementary School in Texas has been identified as Salvador Ramos, according to the State Police.
Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said lawmakers needed to focus on ways to anticipate and preempt future attacks. “I think what we have to do, every time we enter this discussion, is take a look at any kind of reasonable measures, and one of those has to be better understanding where the threats are in the community,” he said. Mr. Tillis dismissed gun control as a standalone solution. “If all you do is focus on controlling weapons, people like this will find other ways to harm people,” he said.
“Only in this country are parents not assured that their kids will be safe at school,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a national union representing 1.7 million members, said in a statement. “We have made a choice to let this continue, and we can make a choice to finally do something — do anything — to put a stop to this madness.”
“Our public schools should be one of the safest places for students and educators,” the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teacher union, representing more than 3 million members, said in a joint statement with the Texas State Teachers Association. “How many more mass shootings need to happen before these lawmakers finally take responsibility and address the gun safety issue?”
In a statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said, “For too long, some in Congress have offered hollow words after these shootings while opposing all efforts to save lives. It is time for all in Congress to heed the will of the American people and join in enacting the House-passed bipartisan, commonsense, life-saving legislation into law.” Senate Democrats have not yet held a vote on legislation the House previously passed that would strengthen background checks for gun buyers. It does not have the Republican support to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Uvalde is a small, working-class city about 80 miles west of San Antonio, about midway between that city and the border with Mexico.
The city of about 15,200 people is in a region with a large Mexican American population, according to census data. Many of its residents were born in the U.S. or have lived in the region for decades.
Tom Nordwick, the chief executive of Uvalde Memorial Hospital, said in a phone interview that 16 people, including 11 children, were brought to his hospital after the shooting. Two of those children, a boy and a girl, were dead on arrival. Four of the injured children were later released, and five children and one adult were transferred to a San Antonio hospital. “You’re probably looking at 8, 9 and 10 year olds,” he said of the injured children.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has supported a wide variety of gun control measures, expressed frustration over partisan gridlock. “Shootings in our schools, in our public spaces, have become far too common,” she said. “And the breakdown of the political process has never been clearer than when we can’t even act to keep our own children safe.”
“Today is a dark day,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said in a statement. In messages posted on Twitter, the lawmaker said the nation has “seen too many of these shootings,” but he did not immediately call for any specific policy proposals to help prevent mass killings. He is scheduled to speak at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Houston on Friday.
The shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday jolted a nation numbed by a drumbeat of mass shootings and evoked painful memories of another time a gunman crossed the sacred threshold of an elementary school and opened fire in Newtown, Conn., 10 years ago.
The shooting at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday “horrifically, incomprehensibly” killed 14 students and a teacher, Gov. Greg Abbott announced.
The White House on Tuesday released a photo of President Biden talking to Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas aboard Air Force One. In a tweet, the president’s communications director wrote that “President Biden just spoke with Governor Abbott to offer any and all assistance he needs in the wake of the horrific shooting in Uvalde.”
In a statement, the National Parents Union called for policy change and “more than thoughts and prayers,” citing more than 100 school shootings in Texas since 1970. “As a nation, our track record of putting children before politics, before special interests is shameful and leaves us with little hope,” the organization said. “Please prove us wrong.”
Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, described the attack as an “unbelievably tragic and horrible crime,” and expressed support for so-called “red flag laws” that help restrict potentially violent individuals from accessing firearms.
Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat whose effort at legislation on background checks for gun purchases was blocked in 2013, said, “It makes no sense at all why we can’t do common sense things and try to prevent some of this from happening.”
The massacre at Robb Elementary School comes as a trial is underway for the gunman in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where a former student killed 17 people and injured 17 others in one of the deadliest school shootings in American history. Jury selection began in April, and opening statements are expected to begin in June. The jury will decide whether the gunman, who pleaded guilty, should be sentenced to death or life in prison.
Ryan Ramirez could not find his daughter, a fourth grader at Robb Elementary, when he showed up at the school and at a reunification point at a civic center. “Nobody’s telling me anything,” he told KSAT in San Antonio, adding, “I’m trying to find out where my baby’s at.”
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, tweeted that the shooting had left him “horrified and heartbroken.” His spokesman said that the senator had no further comment.
The shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, comes just 10 days after a gunman killed 10 people, all of whom were Black, at a Buffalo grocery store in what was was one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent American history. It was then the deadliest shooting in the United States this year, until the shooting Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas.
On May 14, an 18-year-old white gunman armed with an assault rifle and tactile gear opened fire on shoppers and store employees at a Tops Friendly Market on a busy Saturday afternoon in Buffalo’s predominantly Black East Side. Ten people were killed, and three more were injured, most of whom were Black.
Rey Chapa, 42, of Uvalde, said by phone that his nephew had been in the school when the shooting occurred, and was not injured. “This is just evil,” he said, using an expletive. He was waiting to hear back from family and friends on the conditions of other children, and scrolling through Facebook for updates. “I’m afraid I’m going to know a lot of these kids that were killed.”
“It is being reported that the subject shot his grandmother right before he went into the school,” Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said at a news conference, adding, “I have no further information about the connection between those two shootings.”
Governor Abbott also said it had been reported that the gunman had been a student at Uvalde High School.
President Biden on Tuesday ordered the flags lowered on federal buildings in honor of the victims of the school shooting in Texas. The proclamation said he was taking the action “as a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of violence perpetrated on May 24, 2022, by a gunman at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.”
The shooting in Texas is the deadliest shooting at an elementary school since the one in Newtown, Conn., according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for gun control. The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 killed 20 first graders and six adults.
The mass shooting that left 14 students and a teacher dead on Tuesday took place at an elementary school that serves more than 500 students who are between second and fourth grades and where the last day of the school year had been scheduled for this Thursday.
The authorities have said that a gunman killed 14 students and one teacher at the school. Students between second and fourth grades are generally between the ages of 7 and 10.
President Biden will deliver remarks on the Texas school shooting Tuesday evening at 8:15, White House officials said. The president is scheduled to return from a trip abroad at 7 p.m. and will address what officials called “the horrific elementary school shooting” from the Roosevelt Room as soon as he returns to the White House.
Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and an advocate for gun control legislation, said, “I think everybody here is going to be shaken to the core by this.” He added, “I have no idea how a community deals with this. There’s no way to do this well. Your community is never ever the same after this.”
Mr. Murphy, who represents the town devastated by the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, said he was working to directly offer his condolences to the Texas senators. “People in Texas have been through way too many of these, from El Paso to Sutherland springs,” he added. “this is just a trail of horror that no state should ever have to go through.”
Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas said on Twitter that Uvalde is “a wonderful, tight-knit community” and that “this is a parent’s worst nightmare.”
The chief of the school district’s police force, Pete Arredondo, told reporters that the shooting, which he described as a “mass casualty incident,” occurred at 11:32 a.m. “We do have some deaths,” he said, without specifying how many. “The suspect did act alone during this heinous crime,” he said.
Former Representative Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who is running for governor in Texas, said on Twitter that “our broken hearts are with Uvalde.”
Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement that “Texans are grieving for the victims of this senseless crime and for the community of Uvalde,” adding that he had instructed several agencies “to fully investigate this crime.”
“There’s no words to describe how horrific this is,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill. He added, “We’re still trying to get a clear picture of what happened and what the motivation was.”
Anguished parents were instructed by the district to stay away from the school. A message to parents on the district website said, “Please do not pick up students at this time. Students need to be accounted for before they are released to your care.” Parents were told to gather at the Uvalde Civic Center “for reunification.”
The National Rifle Association’s annual meeting is set to be held in Houston starting on Friday. Former President Donald J. Trump, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Senator Ted Cruz are among those scheduled to address the gathering.
President Biden was briefed on the Texas school shooting Tuesday afternoon as he flew back from Japan, where he was on a foreign trip, according to his spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Pierre. She said: “His prayers are with the families impacted by this awful event, and he will speak this evening when he arrives back at the White House.”
The authorities said in a brief news conference that the suspect acted alone when he shot and killed 14 children and a teacher. The police chief did not share more information on Tuesday afternoon. The authorities are expected to deliver another update later this evening.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has repeatedly called for more stringent laws on gun safety, criticized Republicans. “Another shooting,” he tweeted. “And the G.O.P. won’t do a damn thing about it. Who the hell are we if we cannot keep our kids safe.”
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
The last day of school was to be this Thursday, according to the district's calendar.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said that the gunman was an 18-year-old man who had abandoned his vehicle and entered the school with a handgun and possibly a rifle. “He shot and killed horrifically, incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher,” Mr. Abbott said. The gunman was deceased, Mr. Abbott said. The death toll could not be independently verified.
WASHINGTON — The United States is in the middle of a great gun-buying boom that shows no sign of letting up as the annual number of firearms manufactured has nearly tripled since 2000 and spiked sharply in the past three years, according to the first comprehensive federal tally of gun commerce in two decades.
The report, released by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on Tuesday — three days after a mass shooting in Buffalo left 10 dead — painted a vivid statistical portrait of a nation arming itself to the teeth. Buyers capitalized on the loosening of gun restrictions by the Supreme Court, Congress and Republican-controlled state legislatures.
The massacre in which at least 14 children and a teacher were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24 was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States so far this year. It happened just 10 days after 10 people were shot and killed in a supermarket in Buffalo.
The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization, counted at least 215 such shootings, defined as one in which four or more people were killed or injured, through mid-May. Of those shootings, 10 involved four or more fatalities."
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