A gunman killed at least 19 children and two adults on Tuesday in a rural Texas elementary school, a state police official said, in the deadliest American school shooting since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary a decade ago.
Nearly 12 hours after the shooting, many families in Uvalde are still searching for children who were not at the designated reunification point and have yet to be identified at area hospitals. Aunts, uncles and grandparents have blanketed Facebook with photos and pleas for any information.
Older siblings and cousins have made their own posts across Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat, sometimes sharing wrenching details about what the children wore to school on Tuesday morning in hopes of helping identify them.
The slayings took place just before noon at Robb Elementary School, where second through fourth graders in Uvalde, a small city west of San Antonio, were preparing to start summer break this week. At least one teacher was among the adults killed, and several other children were wounded.
Pretty much Alfred Garza III’s entire family — parents, girlfriend, sister, aunt and more — had gathered in the room when the Texas Rangers broke the horrible news late Tuesday: His 10-year-old daughter, Amerie Jo Garza, the girl who loved Play-Doh, was among the victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting.
Amerie Jo was “full of life, a jokester, always smiling,” her father said in brief phone interview. She didn’t talk a lot about school, but liked spending time with her friends at lunch, in the playground and during recess. “She was very social,” he said.
Berlinda Irene Arreola, Amerie's grandmother, said that Ramos told the class 'you're going to die' before he began his massacre - shooting her granddaughter dead as she tried to call 911. Amerie was sat next to her best friend who was left 'covered in her blood', Berlinda told the Daily Beast.
'So the gunman went in and he told the children, "You’re going to die." And [Amerie] had her phone and she called 911. And instead of grabbing it and breaking it or taking it from her, he shot her. She was sitting right next to her best friend. Her best friend was covered in her blood,' Berlinda said.
Also killed in the attack were two boys - Xavier Lopez, 10, and nine-year-old Uziyah Garcia - and three more girls - Makenna Elrod, 10, Eliahana Torres, also 10, and Ellie, whose age and surname were not immediately available. Eva Mireles, 44, and Irma Garcia, a mother-of-four, were the two teachers shot and killed.
Ramos was eventually stopped by a Border Patrol agent who had been manning a nearby post and rushed into the school. The two exchanged gunfire, with Ramos shot and killed. The agent was wounded, a local official said, but was able to walk himself out of the school.
More than a dozen children were also hurt in the attack, including a ten-year-old girl taken to hospital in the nearby city of San Antonio in critical condition. A 66-year-old woman - believed to be Ramos's grandmother who he shot at the start of his killing spree - was in the same hospital, also in critical.
A second hospital within Uvalde itself said 13 children had been brought to them, without saying what condition they are in. Police warned late Tuesday that the death toll is expected to rise.
Just hours before the killings took place, Ramos had messaged an acquaintance on Instagram telling her he had a 'lil secret' he wanted to share, after earlier tagging her in a photo of two guns he bought himself on his 18th birthday. His TikTok account also featured a short user bio that read: 'Kids Be Scared.'
“She talked to everybody.”One of the rifles that Ramos legally purchased was found alongside his body in the school, police sources told Click2Houston, while another was found in a truck which he crashed close by.
A backpack filled with loaded magazines was found abandoned on the way into the school, while seven 30-round magazines were found inside the grounds. It was not immediately clear whether they were full or empty. Ramos was found wearing a body armor vest, police added, though it had no armor plating inside.
Joe Biden, speaking at the White House where he had ordered flags to fly at half-staff in honour of the victims, kicked off the inevitable debate about gun control. Declaring himself 'sick and tired' of the cyclical discussion, he called for voters to 'turn this pain into action' to prevent more mass killings. 'We have to act,' he said.
'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,' he said.
Ted Cruz, Republican senator for Texas, led the response - repeating well-worn arguments that 'restricting the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens' to prevent mass shootings 'doesn't work'. The solution, he said, is to put armed officers on school campuses. Cruz is due to speak an at NRA conference on Friday.
Salvador Ramos, 18, shot his grandmother before going to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde; engaging border patrol agents nearby in a shootout; and then barricading himself inside the school, killing 19 students and two teachers
Children confirmed dead by family members included 10-year-olds Xavier Lopez, Eliahana Torres, and Makenna Elrod, and eight-year-old Uziyah Garcia.
Another girl called Ellie Garcia was also confirmed to have died by her grieving parents.
'My nephew was a victim of a school shooting today,' Mitch Renfro wrote on Facebook, confirming Garcia's death. '[She] was killed by a crazy man,' he added.
The missing included Rogelio Torres and Nevaeh Bravo.
The father of 10-year-old Annabelle Guadalupe Rodriguez said that she was also still missing.
'He shot and killed - horrifically and incomprehensibly - 14 students and killed a teacher,' Abbott said at a press briefing. The death toll was later revised to 19 children.
'There are families that are in mourning right now. And the state of Texas is in mourning with them.'
A picture of the gunman has also started to emerge as a bullied loner, picked on at school because of a lisp, a habit of wearing eyeliner, his clothes and because he came from a poor family.
Those who knew Ramos or his relatives say he was a 'nice' but 'quiet' boy who grew increasingly violent as he became older, amid relentless bullying both in school and online.
Santos Valdez told the Washington Post that he used to be friends with Ramos and played online shooter games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty with him, until the pair stopped talking as Ramos's behaviour 'deteriorated.'
Valdez said Ramos had showed up to the park one time with cuts all over his face, initially claiming he was scratched by a cat before admitting that he did it to himself with a knife.
Stephen Garcia, who considered himself Ramos’s best friend in eighth grade, said he was 'bullied by a lot of people' including for over a photo of himself wearing eyeliner which led to 'gay' taunts. Garcia said Ramos dropped out of school when he moved away to another part of the state, and the two had lost touch.
Others confirmed that Ramos had stopped attending classes, and did not intend to take part in graduation this summer. Instead, he got a job at a local Wendy's restaurant.
A colleague there described Ramos has having an aggressive streak. She told the Daily Beast he walked around with a pair of boxing gloves at the park, asking people to fight him and filming it. He also menaced co-workers, asking one of the cooks: 'Do you know who I am?'
'He would be very rude towards the girls sometimes... and he would also send inappropriate texts to the ladies,' the former colleague said, asking for her name not to be used.
As an 18th birthday present to himself earlier this month, Ramos bought two AR-style rifles and paraded them on social media, including in ominous messages sent hours before the killing started.
A teenage acquaintance of Ramos, who lives in Los Angeles and claims to barely know him, posted screenshots of messages he sent her early Tuesday after tagging her in a picture of his rifles. In them, he said he wan
Ruben Flores, who knew Ramos's family, said he had an unstable home life and got into blow-up fights with his mother, who he grew up with alongside two sisters in a house around a five minute drive from Robb Elementary.
Police had been called to the home on more than one occasion, Flores added.
She said Ramos had moved in with his grandmother 'a few months ago'. Flores said the grandmother was in the process of evicting Ramos's mother from her house, which the elderly lady owned.
The deadly assault in Texas follows a series of mass shootings in the United States this month.
On May 14, an 18-year-old self-declared white supremacist shot 10 people dead at a Buffalo, New York grocery store, targeting black people.
The following day, a man blocked the door of a church in Laguna Woods, California and opened fire on its Taiwanese-American congregation, killing one person and wounding five.
Annabelle Guadalupe Rodriguez's father said the 10-year-old was still unaccounted for
Despite recurring mass-casualty shootings, multiple initiatives to reform gun regulations have failed in the US Congress, leaving states and local councils to strengthen - or weaken - their own restrictions.
The National Rifle Association has been instrumental in fighting against stricter US gun laws. Abbott and Cruz are listed as speakers at a forum that is being held by the powerful lobby in Houston, Texas later this week.
The United States suffered 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent compared to 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its latest data.
It was the deadliest such incident since 14 high school students and three adult staff were killed in Parkland, Florida in 2018 - and the worst at an elementary school since the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, in which 20 children and six staff were killed.
'The idea that an 18-year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong,' said Joe Biden, addressing the country from the White House on Tuesday night.
'As a nation, we have to ask: When in God's name will we stand up to the gun lobby?'
He added: 'Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep on letting this happen? Where in God's name is our backbone?'
Mireles, a fourth grade teacher, was identified by her family as being one of the staff members shot dead. She had worked in education for 17 years.
Her husband Ruben Ruiz, a veteran detective and SWAT team member currently serving as a police officer with the school district, held regular active shooter drills for the schools - most recently at the end of March.
Garcia, who co-taught with Mireles for the last five year, had been at Robb Elementary for 23 years.
Married to Joe for 24 years, she was a mother of four - Cristian, completing Marine boot camp; Jose, attending Texas State university University; Lyliana, a sophomore in high school; and Alysandra, a 7th grader.
'My tia did not make it, she sacrificed herself protecting the kids in her classroom, i beg of you to keep my family including all of her family in y’all’s prayers , IRMA GARCIA IS HER NAME and she died a HERO,' tweeted her nephew John.
'She was loved by many and will truly be missed.'
She was nominated as teacher of the year for the 2018-19 awards, organized by Trinity University.
'Let me assure you, the intruder is deceased,' said Pete Arredondo, chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department.