At least 19 children and three adults were killed in a shooting at an elementary school in the US state of Texas on Tuesday, Reuters news agency reported on the basis of information from local authorities. The children who were shot are between the ages of seven and ten. The adult victims are two teachers and 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos, who was shot dead by police, according to Governor Greg Abbott.
The shooting started just before noon local time at Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde, located about 135 kilometers west of the city of San Antonio. Abbott spoke of “a horrible and incomprehensible act.”
The motive of the perpetrator is not yet known. He drove according to CNN in a car to the school and was armed with a rifle and pistol and was wearing a bulletproof vest. Both CNN if CBS News report that the 18-year-old boy first shot his grandmother before he went to school, but authorities have not yet confirmed this.
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Multiple injured
Uvalde Memorial Hospital said it had admitted 13 children and a 40-year-old man with various injuries after the shooting. A 66-year-old woman and 10-year-old child who were present at the shooting arrived at a hospital in San Antonio, the hospital reports. Twitter† Both are in critical condition.
Robb Elementary School has just under six hundred students. Students who were taken to safety have been reunited with their parents at a community center.
The Texas shooting is one of the deadliest in a US school since the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, killing 26 people, including 20 children.
Biden: When are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?
President Joe Biden addressed his country on Tuesday evening local time immediately after returning from a visit to Asia and said he was deeply defeated. “Losing a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away,” he said. “As a country, we need to ask ourselves when the hell are we going to stand up to the gun lobby. When the hell are we going to do what we all know should be done?” He proposed a ban on assault weapons and other “sensible gun laws.”
Biden was vice president under Barack Obama during the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. “I had hoped that if I became president I wouldn’t have to do this again,” he began his speech. Obama lashed out at Republicans in a statement about the shooting. “Our country has been paralyzed, not by fear, but by a gun lobby and a political party that has shown no willingness to do anything that can help prevent these kinds of tragedies.”
Schools in the Uvalde district will not open until the holidays, school administrator Hal Harrell said at a news conference. “The school year is over. This was a tragic and senseless event and my heart is broken today.”
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