From Reuters:
“Gunman kills 19 children, 2
teachers at Texas elementary school”
(A child looks on through a glass
window from inside the Ssgt Willie de Leon Civic Center, where students had
been transported from Robb Elementary School after a shooting, in Uvalde,
Texas, U.S. May 24, 2022.)
A teenage gunman murdered at
least 19 children and two teachers after storming into a Texas elementary
school on Tuesday, the latest bout of gun-fueled mass killings in the United
States and the nation's worst school shooting in nearly a decade. The carnage
began with the 18-year-old suspect, identified as Salvador Ramos, shooting his
own grandmother, who survived, authorities said. He fled that scene and crashed
his car near the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a town about 80 miles
(130 km) west of San Antonio. There he launched a bloody rampage that ended
when he was killed, apparently shot by police. The motive was not immediately
clear. Law enforcement officers saw the gunman, clad in body armor, emerge from
the crashed vehicle carrying a rifle and "engaged" the suspect, who
nevertheless managed to charge into the building and open fire, Texas
Department of Public Safety (DPS) Sergeant Erick Estrada said on CNN. Speaking
from the White House hours later, a visibly shaken U.S. President Joe Biden
urged Americans to stand up to the politically powerful U.S. gun lobby, which
he blamed for blocking enactment of tougher firearms safety laws. read more Biden
ordered flags flown at half-staff daily until sunset on Saturday in observance
of the tragedy. "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 U.S. ban on assault-style weapons and other
"common sense gun laws."
Mass shootings in America have
frequently led to public protests and calls for stricter background checks on
gun sales and other firearm controls common in other countries, but such
measures have repeatedly failed in the face of strong Republican-led
opposition. Authorities said the suspect in Tuesday's killings acted alone.
Governor Greg Abbott said that the shooter was apparently killed by police who
confronted him at the school, and that two officers were struck by gunfire,
though the governor said their injuries were not serious. After conflicting
early accounts of the death toll, Texas public safety officials said Tuesday
night that 19 school children and two teachers had died. The community, deep in
the state's Hill Country region, has about 16,000 residents, nearly 80% of them
Hispanic or Latino, according to U.S. Census data.
'MY HEART IS BROKEN' The
school's student body consists of children in the second, third and fourth
grades, according to Pete Arredondo, chief of the Uvalde Consolidated
Independent School District Police Department. Pupils in those grades would
likely have ranged in age from 7 to 10. "My heart is broken
today," school district superintendent Hal Harrell told reporters late in
the day, his voice quaking with emotion. "We’re a small community and we
need your prayers to get us through this." A mass shooting 10 days
earlier claimed 10 lives in Buffalo, New York, in a predominantly Black
neighborhood. Authorities have charged an 18-year-old who they said had
traveled hundreds of miles to Buffalo and opened fire with an assault-style
rifle at a grocery store. Tuesday's bloodshed began when the suspect
shot his grandmother before going to the school, Texas Department of Public
Safety officer Chris Olivarez said on Fox News, a development Abbott mentioned
earlier in the day. "I have no further information about the
connection between those two shootings," the governor said. University
Hospital in San Antonio said on Twitter that it had received two patients from
the shooting in Uvalde, a 66-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl, both listed
in critical condition. Uvalde Memorial Hospital said 15 students from
Robb Elementary were treated in its emergency room, with two transferred to San
Antonio for further care, while a third patient transfer was pending. It was
not immediately clear whether all of those students survived. A
45-year-old victim grazed by a bullet was also hospitalized at Uvalde Memorial,
the hospital said. Hours after the shooting, police had cordoned off the
school with yellow tape. Police cruisers and emergency vehicles were scattered
around the perimeter of the school grounds. Uniformed personnel stood in small
clusters, some in camouflage carrying semi-automatic weapons.
EPIDEMIC OF GUN VIOLENCE The
rampage was the latest in a series of mass school shootings that have
periodically reignited a fierce debate between advocates of tighter gun
controls and those who oppose any legislation that could compromise the U.S.
Constitutional right of Americans to bear arms. Tuesday's shooting in Texas was the
deadliest at a U.S. school since a gunman killed 26 people, including 20
children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December 2012. In
2018, a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
Florida, killed 17 students and educators. Firearms became the leading
cause of death for U.S. children and adolescents starting in 2020, surpassing
motor vehicle accidents, according to a University of Michigan research letter
published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month. The day's
horrors were reflected on the Facebook page of Robb Elementary School, where
posts earlier this week showed the usual student activities - a field trip to
the zoo and a save-the-date reminder for a gifted-and-talented showcase. But
on Tuesday, a note was posted at 11:43 a.m.: "Please know at this time
Robb Elementary is under a Lockdown Status due to gunshots in the area. The
students and staff are safe in the building." A second post was more
explicit: "There is an active shooter at Robb Elementary. Law enforcement
is on site." Finally, a note was posted advising parents that they could
meet their children at the small city's civic center.
^ Another sad tragedy. ^
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