At least 15 people have been killed in a shooting at a Texas elementary school.
A shooter attacked Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, according to Governor Greg Abbott (R.). The attack took the lives of 14 students and one teacher. The shooter was also killed in the course of the attack.
“He shot and killed, horrifically, incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher,” Abbott said in a press conference on Tuesday.
The shooting comes just over a week after a shooter killed ten people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. It also comes nearly a decade after a shooter murdered 28 children and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The brutal attack is the third mass shooting where four or more people were killed by a single shooter in 2022, according to Mother Jones.
Abbot said two responding officers were also “struck by rounds” but that they “have no serious injuries.” He said the shooter also shot his own grandmother before carrying out the other killings.
The governor called the attack “a horrific tragedy that can not be tolerated in the state of Texas.” He said the attacker was a young man from the same town who was a student at the local high school. The weapons used in the attack and how the attacker obtained them were not immediately clear.
“The shooter was Salvado Romas, an 18-year-old male who resided in Uvalde,” Abbott said. “It is believed he abandoned his vehicle and entered into the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde with a handgun and he may have also had a rifle but that is not yet confirmed.”
Abbott said the entire state of Texas was in mourning alongside the families of the victims of the horrific crime.
“When parents drop their kids off at school, they have every expectation to know that they’re going to be able to pick their child up when that school day ends,” he said. “There are families who are in mourning right now, and the state of Texas is in mourning with them, for the reality that these parents are not going to be able to pick up their children.”