Uvalde school shooting | |
---|---|
Location | Robb Elementary School, 715 Old Carrizo Road Uvalde, Texas, U.S. |
Coordinates | 29°11′58″N 99°47′18″W / 29.19944°N 99.78833°W |
Date | May 24, 2022 11:28 a.m. – 12:50 p.m. (UTC−05:00) |
Target | Students and staff at Robb Elementary School |
Attack type | Mass shooting, mass murder, school shooting, pedicide, shootout |
Weapons | Daniel Defense DDM4 V7[1][2] |
Deaths | 22 (including the perpetrator) |
Injured | 21 (18 directly, including the perpetrator's grandmother at her home;[3] 3 minor injuries during civilian conflicts with police[4]) |
Perpetrator | Salvador Rolando Ramos[5] |
Motive | Undetermined |
Accused | Responding police officers: Pedro Arredondo Adrian Gonzales |
Convictions | 15-year-old girl in Germany convicted of neglecting to report planned crimes[6][7] |
Charges | Felony abandoning or endangering a child (10 counts for Arredondo; 29 for Gonzales) |
The Uvalde school shooting[8] was a mass shooting on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States, where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at the school, fatally shot 19 students and 2 teachers, while injuring 17 others.
After shooting and wounding his grandmother at their home, Ramos drove to and entered the school, remaining in the classrooms where he shot his victims before members of the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit shot him, after he had bypassed local and state officers who had been in the hallways.[9] Police officers waited more than 1 hour and 14 minutes on-site before breaching the classroom to engage him.[10] Police cordoned off the school grounds, resulting in violent conflicts between police and civilians, including parents, who were attempting to enter the school to rescue children. As a consequence, law enforcement officials in Uvalde were criticized for their response, and their conduct was reviewed in separate investigations by the Texas Ranger Division and United States Department of Justice.
Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officials laid much of the responsibility for the police response on Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department (UCISD PD) Chief Arredondo, who they identified as the incident commander. Arredondo disputed the characterization of his role as incident commander, but was fired by the Uvalde school board. A report by the Texas House of Representatives Investigative Committee attributed the fault more widely to "systemic failures and egregious poor decision making" by many authorities. It said, "At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety... there was an unacceptably long period of time before officers breached the classroom, neutralized the attacker, and began rescue efforts."[11][12] Shortly after the shooting, local and state officials gave inaccurate reports of the timeline of events and exaggerated police actions.[13] The Texas Department of Public Safety acknowledged it was an error for law enforcement to delay an assault on Ramos' position in the student-filled classrooms, attributing this to the school district police chief's assessment of the situation as one with a "barricaded subject", instead of an "active shooter".[14] Law enforcement was aware there were injured individuals in the school before they made their entrance.[15] In June 2024, two officers, including Arredondo, were criminally indicted for allegedly mishandling the response to the shooting.[16][17]
Following the shooting, which occurred 10 days after the 2022 Buffalo shooting, discussions ensued about American gun culture and violence, gridlock in politics, and law enforcement's failure to intervene during the attack. A month after the shooting, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and President Joe Biden signed it into law; it was the most significant federal gun reform legislation since the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994.[18]
After the shooting, Robb Elementary was closed. The district plans to demolish it and build a replacement.[19]
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