WWALDE, Texas (AP) – Spectators have called on police to raid a primary school in Texas, where gunmen killed 19 children and two teachers, a witness said Wednesday as investigators worked to track the massacre, which lasted more than 40 minutes and ended when the 18-year-old shooter was killed by a Border Patrol team.
“Get in there!” Get in there! ” Women nearby shouted at police shortly after the attack began, said 24-year-old Juan Caranza, who saw the scene outside his house opposite Rob’s primary school in Uwalde. Karanza said police officers did not enter.
Minutes earlier, Caranza had watched as Salvador Ramos crashed his truck into a ditch in front of the school, grabbed his semi-automatic AR-15 rifle and shot two people in front of a nearby funeral home, fleeing unscathed.
He then exchanged fire with a school district security officer, ran inside and shot at two arriving police officers from Uwalde who were outside the building, Texas Public Security spokesman Travis Considine said. All law enforcement officers were injured, he said.
Hours later, Considine said authorities did not know for sure whether the school resource officer had exchanged shootings with Ramos.
Ramos broke into a classroom and started killing, a law enforcement official said.
He “barricaded himself by locking the door and just started shooting at children and teachers who were in this classroom,” Lt. Christopher Olivares of the Department of Public Safety told CNN. “It just shows you the complete evil of the shooter.”
All killed were in a classroom, he said.
Public Safety Director Steve McCrow said it was “within 40 minutes” of Ramos firing on a school security officer and being shot dead by a SWAT-like border patrol team. Police later said it was unclear whether the shooter and the security guard fired at each other.
Full coverage: shooting at Uvalde School
A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said Border Patrol agents had trouble breaking into the classroom door and had to get an officer to open the room with a key. The employee speaks on condition of anonymity, as he is not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation.
Karanza thought the officers should have entered the school earlier.
“There were more of them, there was only one of them,” he said.
Uwalde is a predominantly Latin American city of about 16,000 people about 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the Mexican border. Robb Elementary, which has nearly 600 students in second, third and fourth grade, is a one-story brick structure in a predominantly residential neighborhood with modest houses.
Before attacking the school, Ramos shot and wounded his grandmother at her home. Neighbors called police when she stumbled outside and saw she had been shot in the face, Considine said.
Ramos legally bought the rifle and a second similar one last week, just after his birthday, authorities said.
Investigators have not shed light on the motive for the attack, which injured at least 17 people. Gov. Greg Abbott said Ramos, a resident of a small town about 85 miles (135 kilometers) west of San Antonio, had no known criminal or mental history.
“Evil engulfed Uwalde yesterday,” said Governor Greg Abbott.
About half an hour before the mass shooting, Ramos sent the first of three online messages, Abbott said. Ramos writes that he will shoot his grandmother, and then that he shot the woman. In a final note sent about 15 minutes before he reached Rob Elementary School, he said he would shoot at a primary school, according to Abbott. Investigators said Ramos did not specify which school.
Ramos sent the personal text messages one-on-one via Facebook, and they were “discovered after the terrible tragedy,” company spokesman Andy Stone said. He said Facebook was cooperating with investigators.
Grief engulfed Uwalde as details emerged of the latest massacre to shake the United States
Among the dead were Eliahna Garcia, a 10-year-old child who loved to sing, dance and play basketball; a fellow fourth-grader, Xavier Javier Lopez, who was looking forward to a summer of swimming; and a teacher, Eva Mireles, with 17 years of experience, whose husband is an employee of the school district police department.
“You can just tell from their angelic smiles that they were loved,” said schoolteacher Uwalde Hal Harel, fighting back tears as he recalled the children and teachers killed. “That they loved coming to school, that they were just valuable people.
Amid calls in the United States for stricter gun restrictions, the Republican governor has repeatedly spoken out about mental health problems among young people in Texas, arguing that stricter gun laws in Chicago, New York and California are ineffective.
Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is running against Abbott for governor, cut short a press conference Wednesday, calling the tragedy “predictable”. Pointing to Abbott, he said, “It’s up to you until you decide to do something different. This will continue to happen. ” O’Rourke was escorted while some in his room shouted, and Uwalde Mayor Don McLaughlin called him “a sick son of a bitch who would make a deal like this to make a political question!”
Texas has some of the most gun laws in the nation and is home to some of the deadliest shootings in the United States in five years.
“I just don’t know how people can sell that kind of gun to an 18-year-old,” said Syria’s Arizmendi, the victim’s aunt Eliana Garcia, angrily through tears. “What will he use it for, other than that?”
The attack in a predominantly Latin American city was the deadliest school shooting in the United States since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.
The Uwalde tragedy was the latest in a seemingly endless wave of mass shootings in the United States in recent years. Just 10 days earlier, 10 blacks were shot dead in a racist attack on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
President Joe Biden said Wednesday that the “Second Amendment is not absolute” as he called for new gun restrictions following the massacre at a Texas primary school. When the constitutional amendment on the carrying of weapons was approved, he said: “You cannot own a gun. You cannot own certain types of weapons. There have always been restrictions. “
In a grim address hours after the attack, Biden called on Americans to “stand up to the gun lobby.”
But the prospects for any reform of national arms regulations seemed bleak. Repeated attempts over the years to expand inspections and impose other restrictions have met with Republican opposition in Congress.
The shooting came days before the National Rifle Association’s annual congress began in Houston, with the governor of Texas and two U.S. Republican senators due to speak.
Ramos posted other hints on social media that something would happen in the days and hours before the massacre.
The day he bought his second weapon last week, an Instagram account he said apparently belonged to Ramos carried a photo of two AR-15 rifles. This post was tagged to another Instagram user by asking her to share the photo.
“I hardly know you and you tag me in a picture with some weapons,” replied the Instagram user, who has since removed his account. “It’s just scary.”
On the morning of the attack, the shooter’s account replied, “I’m on my way.”
Instagram said it was working with law enforcement to review the account, but declined to answer questions about the posts.
Investigators are also looking at a TikTok account, probably belonging to the shooter, with a profile that reads: “Children are afraid of IRL”, which means “in real life”.
Investigators still do not know why Ramos went to the school, said McCrow of the Ministry of Public Safety.
“We don’t see a motive or a catalyst at the moment,” he said.
Police found one of the rifles in Ramos’ truck and the other in the school, according to a briefing given to lawmakers. Ramos was wearing a tactical vest, but there were no hardened bulletproof vests inside, lawmakers were told. He also dropped a backpack with several magazines full of ammunition near the school entrance.
Dylan Silva, whose nephew was in the classroom, said students were watching the Disney movie Moana when they heard several loud bangs and a bullet shattered a window. A moment later, their teacher saw the assailant walk past the door.
“Oh, my God, he has a gun!” the teacher shouted twice, according to Silva. “The teacher didn’t even have time to lock the door,” he said.
On Wednesday morning, volunteers were spotted arriving at the city center with Bibles and therapy dogs. Three children and an adult remained in a hospital in San Antonio, where two of them – a 66-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl – were listed in critical condition.
The cohesive community, built around a shady central square, includes many Spanish-speaking families who have lived there for generations. He sits in a field of cabbage, onions, carrots and other vegetables. But many of the most stable jobs are provided by companies that produce building materials.
Residents are connected by family and friendship, said Joe Ruiz, a pastor who was born and raised in Uwalde and has children and grandchildren there.
“Everyone knows everyone or is connected to everyone,” Ruiz said.
His cousin’s wife, he said, was one of the teachers killed in the attack.
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