19 children and two adults dead in Texas primary school shooting
The teenage gunman was shot dead by law enforcement
Last updated 25th May 2022
19 children and two adults have been killed in a shooting at a primary school in the south of Texas.
Officials said the 18-year-old gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde before he was killed by police.
The shooter, who has been named by a governor as Salvador Ramos, had hinted at an attack on social media.
State senator Roland Gutierrez said the teenager shot his grandmother, and it's believed he then drove to the school with two military-style assault rifles, wearing body armour and crashing his car before he went inside.
"My heart is broken today," said Hal Harrell, the school district superintendent, announcing that all school activities were cancelled until further notice.
"We're a small community and we're going to need you prayers to get through this."
It's the deadliest shooting at a US Grade school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut almost a decade ago.
Death toll expected to rise
The massacre of young children was another gruesome moment for a country scarred by an almost ceaseless string of mass killings at churches, schools and stores.
And the prospects for any reform in the nation's gun regulations seemed at least as dim as in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook deaths.
The gunman in Uvalde "shot and killed, horrifically, incomprehensibly, 14 students, and killed a teacher," the governor said, adding that two officers were also wounded but were expected to survive.
"Pray for the lost, their families, and Uvalde," San Antonio mayor Ron Nirenberg said in a tweet.
It was not immediately clear how many people were wounded, but Mr Arredondo said there were "several injuries".
Federal law enforcement officials said the death toll was expected to rise. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to release investigative details.
Earlier, Uvalde Memorial Hospital said 13 children were taken there. Another hospital reported a 66-year-old woman was in critical condition.
Robb Elementary School has an enrolment of just under 600 students, and Mr Arredondo said it serves students in the second, third and fourth grade. He did not provide ages of the children who were shot. This was the school's last week of classes before summer break.
A heavy police presence surrounded the school on Tuesday afternoon, with officers in heavy vests diverting traffic and FBI agents coming and going from the building.
"Sick and tired"- President Biden
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden was briefed on the shooting on Air Force One as he returned from a five-day trip to Asia.
"When in God's name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?" Mr Biden said at the White House on Tuesday evening.
With first lady Jill Biden standing by his side in the Roosevelt Room, Mr Biden added: "I am sick and tired. We have to act."
Uvalde is home to about 16,000 people and is the seat of government for Uvalde County. The town is about 75 miles (120 kilometres) from the border with Mexico. Robb Elementary is in a mostly residential neighbourhood of modest homes.
The tragedy in Uvalde was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, and it added to a grim tally of mass shootings in the state that have been among the deadliest in the US over the past five years.
In 2018, a gunman fatally shot 10 people at Santa Fe High School in the Houston area. A year before that, a gunman at a Texas church killed more than two dozen people during a Sunday service in the small town of Sutherland Springs. In 2019, another gunman at a Walmart in El Paso killed 23 people in a racist attack.
The shooting came days before the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention was set to begin in Houston.
Mr Abbott and both of Texas' US senators were among elected Republican officials who were the scheduled speakers at a Friday leadership forum sponsored by the NRA's lobbying arm.
In the years since Sandy Hook, the gun control debate in Congress has waxed and waned. Efforts by politicians to change US gun policies in any significant way have consistently faced roadblocks from Republicans and the influence of outside groups such as the NRA.