Deadly Shooting In Texas Elementary School Leaves 19 Children And 2 Teachers Dead

Trigger warning: This story contains themes of gun violence that some readers may find distressing

Nineteen children and two teachers were tragically killed in a mass shooting at a primary school in Texas.

The suspected gunman, an 18-year-old, reportedly shot his grandmother before carrying out the mass shooting at the school. Local reports suggest he was a high school student in the area. He was armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and high-capacity magazines, and a handgun, said investigators, reported BBC News. The shooting happened at Robb Elementary School which teaches children aged seven to 10 in the city of Uvalde. It's a predominantly Hispanic community. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the shooter abandoned a vehicle before entering the school to "horrifically, incomprehensibly" open fire. President Biden addressed the shooting shortly after. "Why do we keep letting this happen?" asked Biden, who tried to pass tighter gun control legislation earlier in this term. "Why are we willing to live with this carnage?"

Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Chief of Police Pete Arredondo said the shooting began at 11:32 local time on Tuesday. The investigators said they believe the attacker acted alone during this "heinous crime." Eva Mireles, who was a teacher at the school, was one of the adults killed in the shooting. There are close to 500 pupils enrolled in Robb Elementary School. Authorities said two border agents were reportedly shot in an exchange with the gunman. They are both now in a stable condition at the hospital. This year alone has seen 27 school shootings. It's barely been 10 days since a shooter opened fire at a supermarket in Buffalo, killing 10 people.

Shooter sent pictures of AR-15 to friend
A friend of the shooter who didn't want to be identified said the shooter had sent him photos of the gun he used, reported CNN. “He would message me here and there, and four days ago he sent me a picture of the AR he was using… and a backpack full of 5.56 rounds, probably like seven mags,” he said. “I was like, ‘bro, why do you have this?’ and he was like, ‘Don’t worry about it,’” the friend said. “He proceeded to text me, ‘I look very different now. You wouldn’t recognize me,’” he added.

Biden: When are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?
"I had hoped, when I became President, I would not have to do this, again," said Biden in a message following the shooting. He called the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School "another massacre" in the US. "Beautiful, innocent, second, third, fourth graders. And how many scores of little children who witness what happened, see their friends die, as if they're on a battlefield for God's sake," said Biden. "To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away." The President called on the nation to "stand up to the gun lobby" and urged everyone to support the victims' families. "So tonight, I ask the nation to pray for them, to give the parents and siblings the strength in the darkness they feel now. As a nation, we have to ask when in God's name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God's name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?"

Fred Guttenberg who lost his daughter, Jaime, to a 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida spoke to Anderson Cooper about the shooting in Uvalde. “This has been a horrific day. It doesn’t matter how much time passes, it brings you right back to that minute," said Guttenberg. "I can’t stop thinking about these families today who need to figure out how they’re going to bury their children, who need to figure out how they’re going to console their other children, who need to figure out how they’re going to deal with the reality that they had other children likely in that school who are going to have PTSD, who need to figure out a eulogy,” added Guttenberg.

212 mass shootings in 2022 in America
May 24 is the 144th day of the year but America has already witnessed 212 mass shootings this year pointing to the gun problem in the country, something that no other country experiences, according to the nonprofit organization Gun Violence Archive.


References:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61573377
https://apnews.com/article/buffalo-supermarket-shooting-442c6d97a073f39f99d006dbba40f64b
https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/texas-elementary-school-shooting-05-25-22/index.html
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/

Cover image source: Getty Images | Photo by Jordan Vonderhaar

The school shooting at Uvalde, Texas, is a developing story, and we’ll update as we learn more. Information is swiftly changing and Women Working is committed to providing the most recent and verified updates in our articles and reportage. However, considering the frequency in developments, some of the information/data in this article may have changed since the time of publication.

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