Our live coverage of the mass school shooting in Texas has moved here.
The Mexican government is providing consular assistance in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, which is located roughly 50 miles from the US-Mexico border.
In a statement from Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Relations, the government “condemns this act of violence that has cost children’s lives and devastated families in a predominantly Hispanic town.”
Uvalde school shooter Salvador Ramos worked the day shift at a local Wendy’s, a manager at the restaurant told CNN.
Adrian Mendes, evening manager at the Wendy’s, said Ramos “kept to himself mostly.”
Mendes didn’t know Ramos on a personal level and didn’t see him most of the time because they were on different shifts, he said. Ramos worked from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. or 5 p.m., five days a week, and was already working there when Mendes started in February, he said.
The mass shooting at Robb Elementary School was a “senseless tragedy,” the US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus said in a statement.
“On behalf of the entire CBP workforce, I extend my deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims from today’s horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.”
Earlier, DHS spokesperson Marsha Espinosa said one Border Patrol agent was wounded as they responded to the shooting.
A former classmate of school shooter Salvador Ramos said the gunman texted him photos of a firearm he had and a bag full of ammunition days before the attack.
The friend, who did not want to be identified by name, said he was somewhat “close” to Ramos and would hear from him occasionally to play Xbox together.
The friend said Ramos was taunted by others for the clothes he wore and his family’s financial situation, and eventually was seen less in class.
He said that after his own graduation, he communicated with Ramos less. But every few months, Ramos would send a text or ask to play Xbox, he said.
The grandmother of the suspected gunman is hospitalized in critical condition, Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Erick Estrada told CNN’s Don Lemon on Tuesday.
The suspect is believed to have shot his grandmother before going to the school, three law enforcement sources told CNN. She was airlifted to hospital, Estrada said earlier Tuesday.
A photo of two AR15-style rifles appeared on an Instagram account tied to the suspected Uvalde shooter just three days before Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary school.
The photo was posted as a story under the username “salv8dor_.” Multiple classmates confirmed the account belonged to suspected gunman Salvador Ramos, who was shot dead by officers responding to the school shooting.
Ramos’ TikTok page has only a single post – a clip of a Subway Surfers mobile game. The bio under his profile picture reads: “Kids be scared irl” or in real life.
The death toll has risen following the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Department of Public Safety Sgt. Erick Estrada told CNN’s Don Lemon on Tuesday.
The toll now stands at 21, with 19 students and two adults killed in the shooting, Estrada said.
The gunman was also killed in the shooting.
Fred Guttenberg’s daughter, Jaime, was one of 17 people killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
He spoke with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday, just hours after 18 children and one adult were killed in Uvalde, Texas.
Guttenberg said news of another shooting is infuriating “because all of these instances we know the next one is going to happen because we haven’t done anything to fix it.”
When asked what message he’d give to families in Uvalde, Guttenberg quoted something his rabbi told him at his daughter’s funeral: “We don’t move on, we move forward.”
“I want everyone to know that they are loved and that they are going to go forward. It’s what I call a ‘new normal,’” he said. “But the next few minutes, hours, days are going to be brutal.”
Border Patrol agents who responded to the deadly school shooting in Texas entered the school building and “faced gun fire from the subject, who was barricaded inside,” according to a DHS spokesperson.
Read the full Twitter thread:
Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, criticized President Biden’s response to Tuesday’s shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
He added that he appreciates the empathy that Biden displays but said the address was a disappointment for Americans who advocate for gun safety.
“Joe Biden goes up there and talks about how it’s horrible to lose a family member … and says that it’s bad that mass violence happens. It’s great that he thinks it’s bad. But I can tell you that gun control organizers, people who believe in gun safety, common-sense gun safety laws, around the country were waiting to hear the words ‘executive order’ and instead we heard the words, essentially, thoughts and prayers,” Kasky added.
Kasky noted that mass shootings have become a common occurrence in the United States.
“There’s a new one every single day. And that’s on a good day, because on the bad days there’s quite a few,” he said. “These students are going to go back into school soon and they are going to live lives and have childhoods and early adulthoods that are completely informed by this tragedy. From what I’ve seen with Parkland and with all these other horrible shootings, it changes people forever,” he added.
Attorney General Merrick Garland called today’s deadly school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, an “act of unspeakable violence” and said, “We join our fellow Americans in mourning this terrible loss and in their resolve to end this senseless violence.”
Read the full statement:
President Biden addressed the Texas school shooting in emotional remarks from the White House Tuesday evening, saying, “I had hoped when I became President I would not have to do this again.”
Turning to the issue of gun control legislation, Biden implored lawmakers to “turn this pain into action” as he ticked through some of the mass shootings since the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, when he was vice president.
“I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage,” the President said, asking: “Why do we keep letting this happen?”
“Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the courage to deal with and stand up to the lobbies?” he said.
Tuesday, May 24, was the 144th day of the year.
There have so far been at least 212 mass shootings in 2022, according to the nonprofit organization Gun Violence Archive. This means there have been more mass shootings this year than there have been days in 2022.
CNN and the GVA define a mass shooting as a shooting that injured or killed four or more people, not including the shooter.
Former President Barack Obama responded to the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, by saying the United States “is paralyzed, not by fear, but by a gun lobby and a political party that have shown no willingness to act in any way that might help prevent these tragedies.”
Read Obama’s full statement:
In his remarks to the nation Tuesday, President Biden said on his 17-hour flight from Asia he wondered why mass shootings are so prevalent in America.
“They have mental health problems. They have domestic disputes in other countries. They have people who are lost. But these kinds of mass shootings don’t happen with the frequency they happen in America,” Biden said.
Biden said it is time to “turn this pain into action” for the parents and citizens of the US.
“We have to make it clear to every elected official in this country it’s time to act,” he said.
While addressing the nation after Tuesday’s mass shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, President Biden remembered the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting that claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults, and the others that have followed since.
“Since then, there have been over 900 incidents of gunfires reported on school grounds. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Santa Fe High School in Texas, Oxford High School in Michigan — list goes on and on. The list grows. When you include mass shootings in places like movie theaters, houses of worship, as we saw just 10 days ago at a grocery store in Buffalo New York,” he said.
He stressed the importance of “common-sense gun laws,” saying that not every tragedy can be prevented, but these laws can have a positive impact.
“The idea that an 18-year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong. What in God’s name do you need assault weapon for except to kill someone?” he said.
“Deer aren’t running through the forest with Kevlar vests on for God’s sake. It’s just sick,” he added.
President Biden addressed the nation from the White House tonight, opening his remarks by saying, “I had hoped, when I became President, I would not have to do this, again.”
He called today’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, “another massacre” in the US.
“Beautiful, innocent, second, third, fourth graders. And how many scores of little children who witness what happened, see their friends die, as if they’re on a battlefield for God’s sake,” Biden said.
The President said, “To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away.” He said the feeling is “suffocating.”
The President called on the nation to pray for the victims and “stand up to the gun lobby” in the wake of today’s events.
Watch full speech:
President Biden insisted on delivering a speech to the nation tonight in the wake of the horrific Texas shooting, aides said, demanding to his White House advisers that he address the latest unspeakable slaughter of children in America.
As he flew back to Washington and worked on his speech aboard Air Force One, the President referred to the tragedy of Newtown – and the disappointing aftermath when Congress failed to pass any gun safety legislation.
Biden, who was vice president at the time of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, was the point person for the Obama administration during that legislative push. He has often called that one of the biggest disappointments of his public life – unable to persuade enough senators to support even modest legislation.
The President helped write tonight’s speech “with Sandy Hook in mind,” a senior White House official said, “and his fervent belief that he cannot stop trying to push Congress.”
President Biden is addressing the nation after a shooter killed 18 children and one adult at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday.
He just returned from a presidential trip to Asia, where he met Indo-Pacific leaders in a high-level summit.
