Shooter kills 15 at Texas primary school
Washington, May 24 (EFE).- Fourteen students and a teacher were killed Tuesday when a armed man opened fire inside a primary school in Texas, the state’s governor said.
“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,” Gov. Greg Abbott told a press conference.
“He shot and killed, horrifically and incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher,” Abbott said, identifying the assailant as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos.
“Mr. Ramos, the shooter, he himself is deceased and is believed that responding officers killed him,” the governor said.
Uvalde is a town of some 16,000 people located roughly 85 mi (137 km) west of San Antonio and 75 miles from the Mexican border. Total enrollment at Robb Elementary School is slightly less than 600 students.
“The investigation is leading to tell us the suspect did act alone during this heinous crime,” Pete Arredondo, chief of police at the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, said.
Authorities said that Ramos shot his grandmother before going to the school.
President Joe Biden, who learned of the events in Texas while en route back to Washington from Asia, ordered flags at federal buildings across the United States to be flown at half-staff to honor the victims of the country’s deadliest school shooting since February 2018, when 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
The White House said that Biden would address the nation about the shooting in Uvalde at 8:15 pm (00:15 GMT Wednesday).
ssa/dr
