Texas –
At least 21 people were killed in a shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde City, Texas State, United States. The 18-year-old shooter was killed by local authorities.
Media reports in the US, citing police statements, said of the 21 people killed in the incident, 18 were children and three adults.
Uvalde District Police Chief Pete Arredondo said the shooting began at 11:32 am local time. Investigators believe the attacker “acted alone in committing this heinous crime”.
The district of Uvalde, home to 16,000 residents, is located about 136 kilometers west of the City of San Antonio. The students have reportedly been evacuated from the school. Less than 500 students are enrolled in the school.
Shootings at elementary schools, where students range in age from five to 11, are still relatively rare in the US. The attack on Tuesday (24/05) local time came amid increasing armed violence at the national level.
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Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the attacker was a teenager named Salvador Ramos.
The teenager is also suspected of shooting his grandmother before carrying out the attack on the school, an official told CBS News, the BBC’s partner in the US. Local media reported the teenager may be a local high school student.
CBS News also reported that the assailant was armed with a pistol, an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, and a high-capacity magazine.
The students were evacuated from the school. (Reuters)
The local hospital said the students from the elementary school were being cared for by emergency services.
A 66-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl were admitted to a hospital in San Antonio, and both were in critical condition, University Health hospital officials said.
Uvalde Memorial Hospital posted on Facebook that 13 children had been taken to hospital “by ambulance or bus”.
The mayor of Uvalde, Don McLaughlin, told ABC News in the text message “this is a very bad situation”.
According to CBS, The FBI is assisting in investigating the incident.
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US President Joe Biden has been briefed on the attack, White House officials said, and is expected to deliver a speech on Tuesday. Biden also ordered that flags at the White House and other US federal buildings be flown at half-mast in honor of the victims at Uvalde.
Students in the Uvalde District are scheduled to have their last day of school on Thursday (26/05), before summer vacation. Final year students at the local high school in Uvalde will graduate on Friday (27/05).
Reuters
School shooting incidents have become a recurring emergency in the US. EdWeekan educational media, recorded 26 shooting incidents occurred last year.
Simulation lockdown when shootings occur is a common part of the school curriculum, from elementary through high school.
The 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut shocked Americans. Twenty of the 26 victims in the attack were aged between five and six. The perpetrator was 20 years old.
Addressing the US Senate in Washington DC on Tuesday, Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy accused his colleagues of complacency and pleaded with them to pass gun control laws.
“What do we do? Why are you all here if not to solve existential problems like this? It’s inevitable,” he said.
“These kids are unlucky. It just happens in this country. There’s nowhere else where when their little ones go to school they think they might be shot that day.”
The National Rifle Association, a powerful group opposed to gun control regulations, will hold its annual conference in the city of Houston, Texas, on Friday.
A 2020 report from the US Government Accountability Office found that about two-thirds of all school shootings occur at the high school level. Meanwhile, shootings in elementary schools most often occur by accident.
Firearms were the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens in 2020, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last month. The number of cases even overtakes the number of car accidents.
On Monday, an FBI report found that mass shooting attacks had doubled since the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020.
Watch the video ‘Texas Shooter Kills 18 Children, US Vice President Kamala: Enough is Enough!’:
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