A teenage gunman has murdered at least nineteen children and two teachers in a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, officials have said.
The shooter is believed to have opened fire shortly before midday at Robb Elementary School and the school was immediately placed into lockdown.
Governor Greg Abbott confirmed the shooter, who he named as Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old from Uvalde, had been killed by law enforcement.
What we know so far
The violence began before Ramos even arrived at the grade school. According to police and family members, he shot his grandmother in the head and stole the family truck, before heading to Robb Elementary School. His grandmother, believed to be 66-year-old Celia Martinez, is expected to live.
Once he arrived at the school, Ramos used one of the two high-powered, AR-15-style rifles he bought legally shortly after turning 18.
Once inside, he barricaded himself inside a classroom, killing students and teachers, while shooting at police.
Uvalde is a small town situated between the US-Mexico border to its west and San Antonio to its east, and Border Patrol agents in the area assisted in the police response.
An elite Border Patrol tactical team known as Bortac were eventually able to breach the classroom using a master key from school officials, shooting the gunman, the Wall Street Journal reported.
One Bortac agent’s ballistic shield was shot up during the raid, and another officer was wounded by shrapnel.
As the violence unfolded, children reportedly crawled out of windows to escape the gunshots.
Who has been killed?
Eva Mireles, a 44-year-old teacher, has been identified by her family as one of the two adults killed in the Texas school shooting.
Five children who were killed in the attack have been named as Uziyah Garcia, 8, Xavier Javier Lopez, 10, Amerie Jo Garza, 10, Makenna Lee Elrod, 10, and Jose Flores, 10. Another teacher, Irma Garcia, has also been named by her family as a victim of the shooting.
Garcia was “the sweetest little boy that I’ve ever know,” his grandfather, Manny Renfro, told USA Today.
Ms Mireles’ husband is an officer with the school district’s police force which is now investigating the massacre that began late in the morning on Tuesday and ended with the gunman being shot dead.
Confirming the teacher’s death in Facebook posts, her cousin and grandmother said they were devastated at the loss and furious over the gun violence that has gripped the country.
“My beautiful cousin! Such a devastating day for us all! My heart is shattered into a million pieces,” Arizmendi Mireles, her cousin, said.
Who is the shooter?
Police say they’re still working on understanding the motive behind Tuesday’s tragic shooting.
“Everything is still active,” Lt Christopher Olivarez of the Texas Deparmtent of Public Safety said on Wednesday. “We’re trying to put all the pieces together.”
However, early reports suggest Ramos was a troubled youth with few social connections, an aggressive streak, and an interest in guns.
Salvador Ramos was a student at Uvalde High School and had recently moved in with his grandmother, reports say.
An Instagram account identified by news outlets as belonging to Ramos showed him posing with what appears to be a semi-automatic weapon. A former classmate said that Ramos texted him photos of a firearm and a bag full of ammunition days before the attack.
“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,” the former classmate said.
“I was like, ‘Bro, why do you have this?’ and he was like, ‘Don’t worry about it’,” the student said. “He proceeded to text me, ‘I look very different now. You wouldn’t recognise me’.”
His family said they were unaware he had purchased military-style weapons.
“I didn’t know he had weapons,” his grandfather Rolando Reyes told ABC News. “If I’d have known, I would have reported it.”
The teen had been staying with grandparents after a falling out with his mother, according to the family. He spent most of his time alone in his room, playing video games.
“He was very quiet, he didn’t talk very much,” Mr Reyes said.
The grandfather said he would sometimes take Ramos to work with him, as the teen frequently missed school and wasn’t set to graduate.
Friends and family members paint a picture of Ramos as a troubled teenager, frequently bullied at school for his strong lisp and prone to fits of aggression against fellow students and family members.
“He would get bullied hard, like bullied by a lot of people,” Stephen Garcia, a close friend of Ramos’s in junior high, told The Washington Post. “Over social media, over gaming, over everything...He was the nicest kid, the most shyest kid. He just needed to break out of his shell.”
The teen got in a number of fistfights and school, and had numerous heated altercations with his mother.
“He posted videos on his Instagram where the cops were there and he’d call his mom a b**** and say she wanted to kick him out,” Nadia Reyes, a high school classmate, told the Post. “He’d be screaming and talking to his mom really aggressively.”
A manager at the local Wendy’s said that Ramos worked the day shift at the restaurant. “He felt like the quiet type, the one who doesn’t say much. He didn’t really socialise with the other employees,” Adrian Mendes, the evening manager at Wendy’s, said.
Were there any warning signs?
Just before the shooting, Ramos messaged a girl he didn’t know on Instagram to say he had a “secret” to share with her, regard something he was “about to” do, according to screenshots analysed by news outlets.
The teen, whose name has been kept private because she is a minor, told Ramos she was sick and might not be awake to see what he said.
“I wish I had stayed awake to at least try to convince him not to commit his crime,” she told The Daily Dot.
Where is Uvalde?
Uvalde is town of around 16,000 residents situated 130kms (80 miles) west of San Antonion.
Google Maps posted an “active shooter alert” soon after the shooting began.
The school district’s final day of the year is on Thursday.
Biden demands reform after massacre
President Biden told the nation on Tuesday night it was time to “turn this pain into action” following a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school that killed at least 21 people.
“Why are we willing to live with this carnage?” he said, hoarsely and visibly emotional. “Where in God’s name is our backbone, to have the courage to deal with this and stand up to the [gun] lobbies?”
School shootings on the rise
Statistics released by the FBI on Monday showed school shootings skyrocketed in 2021 compared to the previous year.
There were 61 active shooter incidents in the last calendar year, up by more than 50 per cent from 2020, the FBI said in a new report.
