“A woman reacts outside the SSGT Willie de Leon Civic Center in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. Students were transported to the centre to be picked up by their parents after a gunman opened fire inside nearby Robb Elementary School, killing 18 students and a teacher. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
At least 18 children and three adults — at least one of them a teacher — are now confirmed dead after a shooting at a Texas elementary school Tuesday, a state senator said Tuesday evening.
Sen. Roland Gutierrez said he was briefed by state police on the latest fatalities at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, a heavily Latino community about 135 kilometetres west of San Antonio.
The 18-year-old suspect is also dead, Gov. Greg Abbott confirmed earlier.
It was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. grade school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., almost a decade ago. And it came just 10 days after a gunman in body armour killed 10 Black shoppers and workers at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in what authorities say was a racist attack.
The gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, with a handgun and possibly a rifle, Abbott said. Officials did not immediately reveal a motive, but the governor identified the assailant as Salvador Ramos and said he was a resident of the heavily Latino community.”
A Border Patrol agent who was nearby when the shooting began rushed into the school without waiting for backup and shot and killed the gunman, who was behind a barricade, according to a law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about it.
The agent was wounded but able to walk out of the school, the law enforcement source said.
Abbott said the shooter was likely killed by police officers but that the events were still being investigated. The school district’s police chief, Pete Arredondo, said that the attacker acted alone.
The school, for students in Grades Two through Four, had just under 600 students enrolled. Arredondo did not provide ages of the children who were shot.
The school district was working to contact students’ families and provide support services, Arredondo said.
A heavy police presence surrounded the school Tuesday afternoon, with officers in heavy vests diverting traffic and FBI agents coming and going from the building.
In a statement, Abbott said he had instructed the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers to work with local law enforcement to investigate the shooting.
It was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. It occurred four years after a gunman fatally shot 10 people at Santa Fe High School in the Houston area and less than two weeks after a gunman opened fire at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., killing 10 Black shoppers and workers in what officials have described as a hate crime.
