A gunman walked into an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday afternoon and killed 14 children and a teacher, Gov. Greg Abbott said at a news conference. Police officers are believed to have killed the gunman.
The assailant was an 18-year-old man, who abandoned his vehicle and entered the school with a handgun and possibly a rifle, Abbott said.
“He shot and killed horrifically, incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher,” Abbott said.
At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Pete Arredondo, police chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, said that several adults and students had been injured. The school has students in the second through the fourth grades, he said.
“At this point the investigation is leading to tell us that the suspect did act alone during this heinous crime,” Arredondo said.
Two children who were killed had died by the time they arrived at Uvalde Memorial Hospital, Adam Apolinar, the hospital’s chief operating officer, said earlier in the afternoon. Their ages were not immediately released.
Uvalde is a city of about 16,000 people about 84 miles west of San Antonio.
In an earlier update, the hospital said several students from the school, Robb Elementary, were being treated in the emergency room.
Another hospital, University Health in San Antonio, said that it had received two patients, a child and an adult, from the shooting. The adult is a 66-year-old woman and the child is a 10-year-old girl, who were in critical condition, the hospital said in an update.
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District said on Twitter that there was an “active shooter” at the school around noon.
The school district said it had designated the DeLeon Civic Center, about a mile and a half from the school, as a reunification site for parents to pick up their children.
