Robb Elementary, which has nearly 600 students in second, third and fourth grades, is a single-story brick structure in a mostly residential neighborhood of modest homes. Uvalde, home to about 16,000 people, is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the Mexican border. They also sought to contact Ramos’ relatives and trace the guns. Law enforcement officers investigating the bloodshed began serving search warrants and gathering telephone and other records. Three children and an adult were being treated at a San Antonio hospital, where two of them - a 66-year-old woman and 10-year-old girl - were listed in serious condition. Staff members in scrubs and devastated victims’ relatives could be seen weeping as they left Uvalde Memorial Hospital, where many of the children were taken. On Wednesday morning, volunteers were seen arriving with Bibles and therapy dogs. “No! Please, no!” one man yelled as he embraced another man. At the town civic center where some gathered Tuesday night, the silence was broken repeatedly by screams and wails. In the aftermath, families in Uvalde waited hours for word on their children. The archbishop of San Antonio, Gustavo Garcia-Siller, comforts families outside the Civic Center in Uvalde, Texas. Here's what relatives want everyone to remember about the people they lost. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed after a gunman barricaded himself inside a fourth-grade classroom in Uvalde, Texas, and opened fire.
He also dropped a backpack containing several magazines full of ammunition near the school entrance. Ramos was wearing a tactical vest, but it had no hardened body-armor plates inside, lawmakers were told. Officers found one of the rifles in Ramos’ truck, the other in the school, according to the briefing given to lawmakers. Investigators are also looking at an account on TikTok, possibly belonging to the shooter, with a profile that reads: “Kids be scared IRL,” an acronym meaning “in real life.” The profile is not dated. Instagram confirmed to The Associated Press that it is working with law enforcement to review the account but declined to answer questions about the postings. On the morning of the attack, the account linked to the gunman replied: “I’m about to.”
“I barely know you and u tag me in a picture with some guns,” replied the Instagram user, who has since removed her profile. Ramos apparently tagged another Instagram user, one with more than 10,000 followers, asking her to share the picture with her followers. On the day Ramos bought his second weapon last week, an Instagram account that investigators say apparently belong to Ramos carried a photo of two AR-style rifles. Repeated attempts over the years to expand background checks and enact other curbs have run into Republican opposition in Congress. In a somber address to the nation hours after the attack in Texas, US President Joe Biden pleaded for Americans to “stand up to the gun lobby” and enact tougher restrictions, saying: “When in God’s name are we going to do what has to be done?”Īmelia Sandoval, the grandmother of Xavier James Lopez, who was killed in the Uvalde elementary school shooting, calls for unity: "We can get through this." /wT3XeB8Xhgīut the prospects for any reform of the nation’s gun regulations appeared dim. Just 10 days earlier, 10 Black people were shot to death in a racist rampage at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket. The bloodshed was the latest in a seemingly unending string of mass killings at churches, schools, stores and other sites in the United States. The attack in the predominantly Latino town of Uvalde was the deadliest school shooting in the US since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. But in chilling posts on social media in the days and hours before the massacre, an account that appeared to belong to Ramos displayed photos of his guns and seemed to indicate something was going to happen. Investigators did not immediately disclose a motive.
Police and others responding to the attack also went around breaking windows at the school to enable students and teachers to escape. Law enforcement officers eventually broke into the classroom and killed the gunman.