Texas elementary school shooting death toll rises to 18 children

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The death toll from Tuesday’s shooting at a Texas elementary school has risen to 18 students and one teacher – all killed by an 18-year-old gunman who was then shot dead by police. 

Eve Mireles, a fourth grade teacher, was identified by her family as being the staff member shot dead. She had worked in education for 17 years. 

Governor Greg Abbott named Salvador Roma, a student at Uvalde High School, as the gunman who opened fire at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday morning.

The name was later clarified to Salvador Ramos, who was born in North Dakota but lived in Uvalde. 

His student victims were aged between seven and 11, CNN’s Ed Lavandera reported. 

On Tuesday night the father of 10-year-old Annabelle Guadalupe Rodriguez said that she was still missing.

‘He shot and killed – horrifically and incomprehensibly – 14 students and killed a teacher,’ Abbott said at a press briefing. The death toll was later revised to 18 children.

‘There are families that are in mourning right now. And the state of Texas is in mourning with them.’ 

It was the deadliest such incident since 14 high school students and three adult staff were killed in Parkland, Florida in 2018 – and the worst at an elementary school since the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, in which 20 children and six staff were killed. 

‘Let me assure you, the intruder is deceased,’ said Pete Arredondo, chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department. 

‘We are not looking for another individual in relation to this case.’

Ramos’s social media was full of photos of guns, which he bought legally on his 18th birthday, state senator Roland Gutierrez said. 

Ramos messaged a woman he knew on Instagram, tagging her in a photo of the guns.

‘I got lil secret. I wanna tell you,’ one message said.

‘Be grateful I tagged you,’ he wrote. 

She replied: ‘No it’s just scary,’ adding: ‘I barely know you and you tag me in a picture with some guns?’

Robb Elementary School, which has 600 students enrolled, is located in the city of Uvalde, hometown of Matthew McConaughey, 60 miles east of the Mexican border and 80 miles west of San Antonio. 

Ramos, wearing body armor, equipped with a handgun and possibly a rifle, shot his grandmother, who was airlifted to hospital, before entering the school and opening fire, Abbott said. 

The shooting started around 11:32am.

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Photos show a pickup truck that crashed outside the school, which, according to Abbott, Ramos abandoned before entering the school. 

He was involved in a gunfight with border patrol agents who arrived on the scene. One of the agents was injured, but is expected to survive. 

Additionally, thirteen children are being treated at the Uvalde Memorial emergency room as well as a 45-year-old man who suffered a ‘graze.’

University Health San Antonio also confirmed they received a child whose condition is currently unknown and a 66-year-old woman who is critical condition. 

Joe Biden, who flew home from Japan on Tuesday, will address the nation from the Roosevelt Room of the White House at 8:15pm tonight. Air Force One landed just before 7pm. 

The flags above the White House are flying at half staff.

 

Roland Gutierrez, a Texas state senator, said that Ramos was born in North Dakota.

The 18-year-old engaged in a firefight with border patrol and then ran into the school and barricaded himself, police said. 

Police initially reported he was arrested, before confirming he died.

The shooter acted alone, said Pete Arredondo, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District chief of police. 

Concerned parents were captured at the scene desperately searching for their children and video from the chaotic scene showed police arriving to the school campus with their guns in hand.

One widely shared video appears to show the suspected gunman approach the school while what sounds like gunfire is going off in the background. 

‘There is an active shooter at Robb Elementary. Law enforcement is on site,’ The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District said. 

Videos taken in the immediate aftermath of the shooting show mothers frantically running towards the campus to collect their kids. 

The school warned parents to stay away and instead collect their children from a rendezvous point after they had been ‘accounted for’. 

‘Your cooperation is needed at this time by not visiting the campus. As soon as more information is gathered it will be shared.’

The students were holding a day of celebrations, receiving certificates for the end of the school year. 

Dr Hal Harrell, superintendent of Uvalde school district, said that classes had been cancelled for the rest of the school year.

‘School will be closed,’ Harrell told a press conference on Tuesday evening. 

‘The school year is done. All activities are cancelled throughout the district – I know graduation is on everyone’s mind, but we will come to that later.

‘My heart was broken today.

‘We are a small community, and we will need your prayers to get through this.’

Ninety percent of the school’s students are Hispanic and there are some 70 teachers.

It is one many schools in the district that is a stone’s throw from the Mexican border, with the city of Coahuila 220 miles away. The school sits on the outskirts of the city of Uvalde, population 16,000.

Don McLaughlin, mayor of Uvalde, told Fox News that shots were fired off site, and that after shooting one person, the gunman ran to the school where he barricaded himself inside. 

The district said that the city’s civic center will be used as a reunification center and that parents will be able to pick up their children there once everyone is accounted for. 

A mobile morgue was seen arriving at the school on Tuesday afternoon. 

 

Ted Cruz, a Republican US senator from Texas, tweeted that he and his wife are ‘lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde.’

Ken Paxton, the attorney general for Texas, told Fox News that more teachers should carry guns.

‘We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things,’ he said, adding that he had ‘never understood that argument’.

‘We can harden these schools. We can create points of access that are difficult to get through.

‘We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. 

‘The reality is that we don’t have the resources to have law enforcement at every school.

‘So it takes time for law enforcement – now matter how prepared, no matter how good they are – to get there. So having the right training for some of these people at the school is the best hope.

‘Nothing is going to work perfectly, but that, in my opinion it’s the best answer to this problem.’ 

But Senator Chris Murphy, a Democratic from Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook shooting took place, made an impassioned appeal for concrete action to prevent further violence.

‘This isn’t inevitable, these kids weren’t unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day,’ Murphy said on the Senate floor.

‘I’m here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues: Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely,’ he added.

Kamala Harris, the vice president, said: ‘Enough is enough. As a nation, we have to have the courage to take action and understand the nexus between makes for reasonable and sensible public policy to ensure something like this never happens again.’ 

The deadly violence in Texas follows a series of mass shootings in the United States this month.

On May 14, an 18-year-old white man shot 10 people dead at a Buffalo, New York grocery store.

Wearing heavy body armor and wielding an AR-15 rifle, the self-declared white supremacist allegedly livestreamed his attack, having reportedly targeted the store because of the large surrounding African American population.

The following day, a man blocked the door of a church in Laguna Woods, California and opened fire on its Taiwanese-American congregation, killing one person and injuring five.

Despite recurring mass-casualty shootings, multiple initiatives to reform gun regulations have failed in the US Congress, leaving states and local councils to enact their own restrictions.

The National Rifle Association has been instrumental in fighting against stricter US gun laws. Abbott and Cruz are listed as speakers at a forum that is being held by the powerful lobby in Houston, Texas later this week.

The United States suffered 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent compared to 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its latest data.

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned the ‘monstrous’ shooting before directing her ire at colleagues that have stood in the way of gun reform.

‘Words are inadequate to describe the agony and outrage at the cold-blooded massacre of little schoolchildren and a teacher at Robb Elementary School today,’ Pelosi said in a statement.

‘This monstrous shooting stole the futures of precious children, who will never experience the joys of graduating from school, chasing the career of their dreams, falling in love, even starting a family of their own.’

Referring to the multiple mass shootings in recent weeks, the Democrat continued: ‘Across the nation, Americans are filled with righteous fury in the wake of multiple incomprehensible mass shootings in the span of just days.’

‘This a crisis of existential proportions – for our children and for every American. For too long, some in Congress have offered hollow words after these shootings while opposing all efforts to save lives,’ she said.

‘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.’