A gun has killed 19 children and 2 adults in an elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday.
Gatekeepers News reports that Erick Estrada of the Texas Department of Public Safety said the children were likely between the ages of 7 and 9, adding that the shooter is also dead.
Estrada said the law enforcement noted that a distressed call was received around 11:20 a.m. local time, when the gunman, who has been identified as an 18-year-old male resident of Uvalde, shot his grandmother at her home before heading toward the school in a large, dark truck and crashed the vehicle in a ditch near the small campus.
Estrada said the caller informed law enforcement that the teenager was seen exiting the truck carrying “some sort of rifle,” a backpack, and wearing body armor. The gunman made his way into the school building through a south-facing door and began shooting.
It is, however, unclear if the shooter had a specific target or targets in mind.
U.S. Border Patrol agents were among the law enforcement who responded, exchanging gunfire with the gunman who had barricaded himself inside, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said.
Although at least one Border Patrol agent was wounded, a border patrol agent finally killed the suspect.
According to the school’s website, the school enrolls about 600 students in the second, third, and fourth grades, and Thursday was meant to be the last day of the school year.
At least one of the adult victims of the shooting was a teacher at Robb Elementary.
The mass shooting comes just 10 days after a white gunman opened fire at a Tops supermarket in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo, N.Y. Ten people were killed in that incident.
In reaction, President Biden called lawmakers to “stand up to the gun lobby.”
“I had hoped when I became president I would not have to do this — again,” President Joe Biden told the nation in an address from the White House on Tuesday night.
“Another massacre. Uvalde, Texas. An elementary school. Beautiful, innocent second, third and fourth graders. And how many scores of little children who witnessed what happened — see their friends die, as if they’re in a battlefield, for God’s sake. They’ll live with it the rest of their lives,” he said between heavy sighs.
Biden continued, “What struck me was these kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world. Why?”
“They have mental health problems. They have domestic disputes in other countries. They have people who are lost, but these kinds of mass shootings never happen with the kind of frequency they happen in America. Why? Why are we willing to live with this carnage?”
He also had stern words for those who continue to block gun-control overhaul efforts, saying, “As a nation, we have to ask, when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?”
“When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?” Biden said, before noting that in the 10 years since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, which occurred when he was vice president, there have been over 900 incidents of gunfire reported on school grounds.
“We have to act,” he declared. “And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage.”
Throughout the last two decades, lawmakers have pushed gun control policy changes after mass shootings but have struggled to get the votes necessary to pass the Senate, with Republicans steadfastly opposed.
Biden ordered flags at the White House and other government buildings to be flown at half-staff to honour the victims.
