Facts: Previous shootings in schools in the United States
Some other notable school shootings in the United States:
In May 2019, two people were killed in a shooting at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte.
In May 2018, ten people were shot dead at a high school in Santa Fe, just south of Houston, Texas.
In February 2018, 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at a school in Parkland, Florida.
In December 2017, two teenage students at Aztec High School in New Mexico were shot to death. The perpetrator was also killed.
In October 2014, a 15-year-old boy texted schoolmates and invited to a meeting in the dining room of the school in Marysville near Seattle in Washington in the northwest. After shooting at the guests, he took his own life. Three of those shot died.
In December 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza broke into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and shot dead 20 young children and six adults. Lanza then also murdered his mother before committing suicide.
In April 2007, a 23-year-old student shot dead 33 students and staff at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, and then took his own life.
In March 2005, ten people, five of them students, were killed in the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota. The 16-year-old perpetrator took his own life.
In April 1999, two teenagers shot dead twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado before taking their own lives.
The United States is shaken by another school shooting, the worst in several years. An 18-year-old who was singled out as the perpetrator must first have shot his grandmother or grandmother, then gone to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas where he opened fire on school children and adults.
– The investigation shows that the perpetrator acted alone during this heinous act, says police chief Pete Arredondo at a short press conference where he did not take any questions from the journalists.
Half bar
President Joe Biden ordered the flags lowered to half-mast on all public buildings, military bases and naval vessels in the United States.
The shooting occurred at an elementary school on Tuesday. The suspected 18-year-old perpetrator was killed in the shooting.
“He shot and killed horribly and incomprehensibly 14 students and a teacher,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at a news conference.
Abbott states that the armed man entered the school with a pistol, and possibly a rifle, and opened fire.
Several people have also been taken to hospital. A ten-year-old girl and a 66-year-old woman are being treated with life-threatening injuries at University Health, the university hospital states at Twitter.
Uvalde is a small community with about 16,000 inhabitants located about 100 km from the Mexican border.
According to The New York Times, there are more than 500 school children at Robb Elementary School, the vast majority are of Latin American descent and most are financially disadvantaged. According to Arredondo, students in grades two to four go to school, which normally means an age of seven to ten years.
Requires weapons reforms
“Once again, gun violence has forced itself into our schools, leaving nothing but devastation, trauma and tragedy,” writes the organization Everytown, which works to end gun violence, on Twitter.
Congressman Joaquin Castro describes Twitter Chosen as a wonderful, close-knit community west of his hometown of San Antonio.
“This is a parent’s worst nightmare. We need weapons reforms now,” he writes.
However, the right to bear arms is, to say the least, polarizing in the United States, where voices are being raised at the same time that more people should bear arms to protect school children.