19 students and 3 adults were killed Tuesday during a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Governor Greg Abbott previously said the suspected shooter, an 18-year-old, believed to be from Uvalde, also died.
“He shot and killed horrifically, incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher. The shooter, he himself is deceased and its believed that responding officers killed him,” Abbott previously told a news briefing before the numbers rose.
Uvalde’s district chief of police Pedro “Pete” Arredondo confirmed during a press conference Tuesday that the suspect is dead, noting they are believed to have acted alone during the “heinous” crime.
Arredondo called the shooting a mass casualty incident and said families are being notified.
Stars like LeBron James, Mandy Moore, Chris Evans and Taylor Swift have taken to social media to express their sympathies and outrage at the tragedy.
My thoughts and prayers goes out to the families of love ones loss & injured at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX! Like when is enough enough man!!! These are kids and we keep putting them in harms way at school. Like seriously "AT SCHOOL" where it's suppose to be the safest!
— LeBron James (@KingJames) May 24, 2022
It’s either kids or guns. You need to decide which one is more important and vote accordingly.
— Andy Richter (@AndyRichter) May 24, 2022
— Tim McGraw (@TheTimMcGraw) May 25, 2022
FUCKING ENOUGH!!!!
— Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) May 24, 2022
Filled with rage and grief, and so broken by the murders in Uvalde. By Buffalo, Laguna Woods and so many others. By the ways in which we, as a nation, have become conditioned to unfathomable and unbearable heartbreak. Steve’s words ring so true and cut so deep. https://t.co/Rb5uwSTxty
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) May 25, 2022
Kids shouldn’t be nervous to go to school. This shit is sickening.
— J (@JVCKJ) May 24, 2022
Absolutely heartbroken. And angry. Very angry. This should not be acceptable. Ever. Do we choose a different path? How can we not? These children. So many children.
— Dan Rather (@DanRather) May 24, 2022
What do you say when 14 children and a teacher have been murdered at school? Language is inadequate to the task of explaining the callousness of a country that does absolutely nothing to address rampant gun violence. There is no culture of life here. It is a culture of control.
— roxane gay (@rgay) May 24, 2022
14 babies bro. 14.
— PRELUDE (@LaurenJauregui) May 24, 2022
I didn’t think it was possible to feel more sickened or enraged by school shootings, and then I became a parent.
What an unimaginable nightmare.
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) May 24, 2022
Under the tyranny of the second amendment, my children have lost their unalienable Rights as defined in our Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is not freedom.
— Carrie Coon (@carriecoon) May 24, 2022
The truth is, one nation under guns.
— Amanda Gorman (@TheAmandaGorman) May 24, 2022
We need to make some changes now
— jon batiste (@JonBatiste) May 24, 2022
Anyone saying “now isn’t the time to talk about gun control” doesn’t care that kids got fucking murdered today.
— FINNEAS (@finneas) May 24, 2022
Thoughts and prayers are not enough.
After years of nothing else, we are becoming a nation of anguished screams.
We simply need legislators willing to stop the scourge of gun violence in America that is murdering our children.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 24, 2022
What a fucked up country this is. Take away women’s reproductive rights but give everybody a gun. What could go wrong.
— Andy Cohen (@Andy) May 24, 2022
hearing so many people say this elementary school shooting in uvalde texas is unimaginable when it's the most imaginable thing in america.
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) May 24, 2022
insane that we just keep living like this. really don't want to. tired of gun violence. https://t.co/8gRydJuNqu
— quinta brunson (@quintabrunson) May 24, 2022
GUN CONTROL NOW!
STOP THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS!— Stephen King (@StephenKing) May 24, 2022
The Uvalde Memorial Hospital (UMH) previously shared an update online.
“Please refrain from coming to the hospital at this time,” it read.
Another Hospital, University Health, said at the time that it had received two patients from the shooting – one child and one adult, a 66-year-old woman in critical condition.
The shooter was in custody shortly after 1 p.m, the Uvalde Police Department said.
Robb Elementary School has just 575 students in grades 2 to 4.
Earlier, the district said that all schools in the district were locked down because of gunshots in the area.
A Uvalde Police Department dispatcher said the scene was still active and that no other information was immediately available.
The district said that the city’s civic center will be used as a reunification center and that parents will be able to pick up their children there once everyone is accounted for.
United States president Joe Biden has been briefed on the shooting, according to press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
“His prayers are with the families impacted by this awful event, and he will speak this evening when he arrives back at the White House,” Jean-Pierre said online.
His prayers are with the families impacted by this awful event, and he will speak this evening when he arrives back at the White House.
— Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) May 24, 2022
The shooting is the deadliest in Texas since May 18, 2018, when a gunman killed 10 people and wounded 13 others at Santa Fe High School.
It also comes after an 18-year-old gunman killed 10 people and wounded three more at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighbourhood in Buffalo, N.Y. The gunman had posted online that the shooting was racially motivated.
That shooting reanimated the debate around gun control in the United States, with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul pushing new bills to further restrict people deemed dangerous from accessing firearms.
Texas, meanwhile, has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country. Abbott, a Republican, signed a law last year allowing Texans to carry handguns without a license or training.
In the wake of the 2018 Santa Fe High shooting, Texas lawmakers focused instead on improving school safety, including mandatory emergency training for all school employees and improved mental health care for students.
The law, which passed in 2019, also required school districts to create “threat assessment teams” for every campus as well as “bleeding control stations,” which are essentially battlefield tourniquet kits in schools.
Robb Elementary has a two-page list of preventative safety measures, including a threat assessment team, multiple on-campus police officers, security cameras and metal detectors.
Biden has called on Congress to pass meaningful gun control legislation in the wake of past mass shootings, but action on any restrictions has been routinely blocked by Republicans.
Asked about the push for regulations last week, after he gave a speech condemning the white supremacist ideologies behind the Buffalo shooting, Biden admitted, “It’s going to be very difficult … I’m not going to give up trying.”
Since the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999, more than 300,000 children have experienced shootings at 320 schools, according to an investigation by the Washington Post.
Those shootings have led to the deaths of at least 163 children, educators and other people.
The U.S. government does not keep track of school shooting events, leaving most tallies to be done by independent advocacy groups and media reports.
Matthew McConaughey was born and raised in Uvalde, and Hollywood icon Dale Evans was also from the city.
— With files from the Associated Press
