A teenage gunman fatally shot 14 children and one teacher at a Texas elementary school Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott said.
Abbott identified the shooter as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos. Abbott said Ramos was killed by police officers responding to the scene at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
None of the victims has been identified.
Two police officers were also injured in a shootout with Ramos, but their injuries were not serious, according to the governor. Abbott said the shooter may have been carrying two guns.
Evidence suggests that Ramos acted alone, Uvalde CISD police chief Pete Arredondo told reporters.
“The crime scene is still being worked on, and again we’ll notify the parents and the families as soon as we have news for them,” Arredondo said.
The shooting started around 11:30 a.m. local time, Arredondo said, triggering a district-wide lockdown.
Most of the victims were transported to Uvalde Memorial Hospital. Two were airlifted to University Health in San Antonio, about 80 miles east, because it has a top-level trauma center. It was unclear Tuesday how many people were wounded in addition to the fatalities.
Around 2:20 p.m. local time, parents were told they could pick their children up at the nearby civic center. Robb Elementary covers grades 2 through 4 in Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District.
The shooting came less than two weeks after an 18-year-old white nationalist opened fire at a majority-Black neighborhood grocery store in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people and injuring three more.
“I want to put my heart out to the family members in Texas,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was at NYPD headquarters to announce the arrest of a suspect in this past weekend’s subway shooting in Manhattan. “These shootings are happening far too often, and the response is not meeting the level of threat and danger that we are experiencing, not acceptable. We will never surrender our streets to violence.”
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