Minutes before school attack, Texas gunman posted online warning


The shooter, whose carnage ended when police killed him, also sent a message on Tuesday saying he was going to shoot his grandmother, followed by another internet message confirming he had done so. , said Mr. Abbott at a press conference.

The suspect’s grandmother, who was shot in the face before her grandson left the house they shared to attack the school, survived and called the police.

The shooter, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, also gave no sign that he was about to carry out what is now considered the deadliest shooting at an American school in nearly a decade. according to the authorities.

Fleeing his grandmother’s shooting, he crashed his car near Robb Uvalde Elementary School, Texas, about 80 miles (130 km) west of San Antonio, then managed to escape a police officer from the school who approached him before running inside.

No shots were exchanged at the time, according to police. But authorities have offered few details about the encounter, which will likely be the focus of investigations, except to say the suspect dropped a bag full of ammunition and ran towards the school when he saw the officer.

Ramos then entered the school through a back door carrying an AR-15 style rifle and made his way to a fourth grade classroom where he shot all the people who were killed. Authorities said he had legally purchased two rifles and 375 rounds a few days before the shooting.

Meanwhile, police surrounded the building, breaking windows to help children and staff escape. US Border Patrol agents also responded and entered the building to confront the shooter, one officer having been injured “in the crossfire”, according to Homeland Security officials.

Eventually, Ramos, a high school dropout with no known criminal record or history of mental illness, was shot dead by law enforcement.

Abbott said 17 people suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Among the injured were “several children” who survived the shooting in their classroom, said Chris Olivarez, spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.

The shooter’s online posts were made on Facebook, the governor said, but spokespersons for Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, said they were private messages from no-one discovered after the shooting. . The company declined to say who received the messages or which Meta platform, like Messenger or Instagram, was used to send them.

Relatives of the victims took to social media to express their anguish over the loss of children who never returned from school.

“We told her we loved her and would pick her up after school,” Kimberly Mata-Rubio posted on Facebook in memory of her daughter, Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, a fourth-grade honor student. “We had no idea it was goodbye.”

GUN CONTROL DEBATE

Investigators did not suggest a motive for the shooting, and little about the suspect’s background was immediately revealed.

The suspect’s mother, Adriana Reyes, was quoted in an interview with British news site DailyMail.com as describing her son as someone who “kept alone and didn’t have many friends”.

Ten days earlier, an avowed white supremacist shot dead 13 people at a supermarket in a predominantly black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, reigniting a national debate over US gun laws.

In a sign of the charged political atmosphere, Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate who is challenging Abbott in the November election, interrupted the press conference to confront the governor over the state’s permissive gun laws, shouting ” You do nothing !”.

Several officials gathered on stage around the governor shouted O’Rourke. “You’re a sick son of a bitch who would come to a deal like this to make a political issue out of it,” said one, though it’s not clear who.

O’Rourke was escorted out of the building and spoke to reporters outside. He said it was “nonsense” that an 18-year-old was legally allowed to acquire a semi-automatic rifle and promised to continue restrictions on firearms.

Mr Abbott said strict gun laws do not prevent violence, citing states such as New York. He said policy makers should instead focus on mental health treatment and prevention.

US President Joe Biden, who called for new gun safety restrictions in a national television address Tuesday night, is planning a trip to Texas soon, a senior administration official said.

It seems unlikely that new legislation will be passed in Washington. Virtually all Republicans in Congress oppose tighter gun controls, and there is no indication that the latest massacre will change the equation.

The National Rifle Association’s annual meeting begins Friday in Houston, where Republicans including Mr Abbott, U.S. Texas Senator Ted Cruz and former President Donald Trump were scheduled to address the gun advocacy group.

In a statement, the NRA expressed sympathy for the victims but said the event would go ahead as planned.

World leaders expressed their shock and grief. On Wednesday, Pope Francis said he was “heartbroken” and called for an end to “indiscriminate arms trafficking”.

School shootings have become so common in US schools that data shows a gun was fired almost every day this year on school property, according to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s K-12 School Shooting Database. from the Naval Postgraduate School.

The shooting in Texas is the deadliest since a shooter killed 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December 2012.

Uvalde, in the heart of the Hill Country region of the state, has a population of about 16,000, nearly 80 percent of whom are Hispanic or Latino, according to US Census data.

In the early evening, the elementary school was still wrapped in duct tape, as passers-by periodically approached to hand flowers and stuffed animals to a police officer who carried them to a makeshift memorial taking shape near of the building.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks and Gabriella Borter Uvalde, Texas; additional reporting by Maria Caspani and Tyler Clifford New York, Doina Chiacu, Kanishka Singh, Caitlin Webber, Ted Hesson and Katharine Jackson Washington, Katie Paul Palo Alto, California, Brendan O’Brien Chicago, Rich McKay Atlanta and Andrew Hay Taos, New Mexico; writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Grant McCool, Diane Craft and Raju Gopalakrishnan)



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