Governor Greg Abbott stated on Wednesday that the Texas gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers posted an online message minutes before the attack saying that he was going to fire up an elementary school, as terrible new details of the massacre emerged.
The gunman, who was slain by police after his spree, had sent a message on Tuesday claiming he was planning to shoot his grandmother, followed by another internet post confirming it, Abbott said at a press conference.
The suspect’s grandmother was shot in the face before her grandson left their shared home and assaulted the school, but she survived and contacted the cops.
Authorities said the gunman, Salvador Ramos, 18, gave no other indication that he was about to commit the deadliest school shooting in the United States in nearly a decade.
He crashed his automobile at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, about 80 miles (130 kilometres) west of San Antonio, fleeing the shooting of his grandmother, then managed to elude a school police officer who approached him before dashing inside.
According to police, no gunfire was exchanged at that point. However, authorities provided few specifics about the incident, which is expected to become a focus of investigations, other than to state that when the suspect saw the officer, he dropped a backpack full of ammo and rushed toward the school.
Ramos then entered the school through the back entrance, armed with an AR-15-style rifle, and proceeded to a fourth-grade classroom, where he shot all of the victims. Authorities say he bought two firearms and 375 rounds of ammo legally just days before the shooting.
Meanwhile, police encircled the building and broke windows to assist the children and employees in escaping. Agents from the United States Border Patrol also arrived and entered the facility to engage the shooter, with one agent being injured “in the crossfire,” according to homeland security officials.
Ramos, a high school dropout with no criminal record or history of mental illness, was eventually shot and killed by police.
According to Abbott, 17 people sustained non-life threatening injuries. Among the injured were “several children” who had survived the gunfire.
The governor claimed that the shooter made his online posts on Facebook, while spokesmen for Facebook’s parent firm, Meta Platforms, stated these were private one-on-one chats uncovered after the shooting. The business would not reveal who received the messages or which of Meta’s platforms, like as Messenger or Instagram, were used to send them.
Adriana Reyes, the suspect’s mother, was described in an interview with the British news site DailyMail.com as saying that her son “kept to himself and didn’t have many friends.”
An avowed white supremacist had shot 13 people at a store in a predominantly Black Buffalo neighbourhood ten days before, reigniting a national debate over gun laws.
In an indication of the tense political climate, Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate running against Abbott in November, stopped the press conference to challenge the governor over the state’s lax gun restrictions, yelling, “You are doing nothing!”
O’Rourke was screamed at by a group of officials assembled on stage around the governor. “You’re a crazy son of a bitch who would make a political issue out of a deal like this,” one of them said, though it wasn’t obvious who said it.
After being hauled out of the building, O’Rourke spoke to media outside. He called it “crazy” that an 18-year-old could legally buy a semi-automatic rifle and promised to push for gun control.
According to Abbott, strict gun prohibitions do not prevent violence, citing New York as an example. Instead, he believes policymakers should concentrate on mental health treatment and prevention.
According to a senior administration official, US President Joe Biden is planning a trip to Texas soon after pushing for tougher gun safety rules in a nationally televised address on Tuesday evening.
In Washington, new legislation appeared unlikely to pass. Almost every Republican in Congress opposes stricter gun laws, and there was little indication that the recent atrocity would change that.
The National Rifle Association’s annual conference begins on Friday in Houston, with Abbott, Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, and former President Donald Trump among the Republicans set to speak.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) issued a statement to sympathise.
Leaders from throughout the world voiced their shock and sadness. On Wednesday, Pope Francis expressed his “heartbreak” and called for a stop to “indiscriminate weapon trafficking.”
According to the K-12 School Shooting Database at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security, a gun was fired on school property virtually every day this year.
The Texas incident is the bloodiest school shooting in the United States since a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December 2012, killing 26 people, including 20 children.
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According to U.S. Census data, Uvalde, located in the state’s Hill Country region, has about 16,000 residents, virtually all of whom are Hispanic or Latino.
Wo By early evening, the elementary school was still sealed off with crime-scene tape, with passers-by dropping down flowers and stuffed animals with a police officer who transported them over to a makeshift memorial forming beside the building.
Please send them.
Victims’ families used social media to express their grief at the loss of children who never returned home from school.
“We told her we loved her and will pick her up after school,” Kimberly Mata-Rubio said on Facebook in memory of her fourth-grade honour student, Alexandria Aniyah Rubio. “We had no idea this was going to be our last farewell.”
The debate over gun regulation is ongoing.
Investigators have not stated a motive for the shooting, and little information about the suspect’s past has surfaced.
