By Sulaimon Jamiu
Not less than 19 children and two adults were killed when an 18-year-old gunman identified as Salvador Ramos opened fire in a Texas elementary school, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The suspected shooter, who might have had a handgun and a rifle, was also killed when law enforcement confronted him at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, about 83 miles west of San Antonio, Gov. Greg Abbott said at a news conference.
“It is believed that he abandoned his vehicle, then entered into the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde with a handgun, and he may have also had a rifle,” Abbott said.
“He shot and killed, horrifically and incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher,” the governor said before additional deaths were confirmed.
The Texas Department of Public Safety said later that 19 children and two teachers were killed, in addition to the suspected shooter. Multiple survivors, the exact number was not released, were being treated at regional hospitals.
It was yet another mass shooting targeting children and educators at an American school campus.
Tuesday’s attack recalls the deadly shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999; Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018; and Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, later in 2018.
The assault at Robb Elementary School in the heavily Latino town of Uvalde was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.
