Some Grieve, Others Seethe After Texas Mass School Shooting

UVALDE, Texas — Flags were already being flown at half-staff on Tuesday evening, hours after an armed gunman entered Robb Elementary School and opened fire in a classroom.

By then, throngs of reporters and federal agents had descended upon the small southwest Texas town of Uvalde. The death toll hadn’t been officially updated to its current figure — 21 people, 19 school children and two faculty members — before all hotels in town and several towns over were completely booked.

Law enforcement agents established a perimeter around the school that media tents crowded around on Wednesday morning. Anchors stood across the block and delivered their standups as mourners were allowed to cross the police barrier to leave flowers in front of the school’s front sign.

Police gave reporters the latest information they had at the scene. All victims had been identified and all appropriate notice was given. The shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, had shot his grandmother in an altercation before fleeing for the school.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott would say during a press conference later on Wednesday that Ramos made a series of Facebook posts announcing his intentions that day. They contained no motive that explained his actions.

Prior to entering the school, Ramos was involved in an auto collision and fled that scene as well, Department of Public Safety Officers told The Well News. Officers witnessed him arrive at the campus and head towards the classrooms.

Then, bullets began to fly. Police rushed in without waiting for backup but the damage had already been done.

Three officers were wounded in the confrontation with Ramos, but each was in good condition as of Wednesday. Ramos was apparently confronted by police at the scene prior to the shooting, but managed to enter the school by some means and proceeded to barricade himself in the classroom where the murders occurred. Seventeen people suffered nonlife-threatening injuries.

Uvalde’s SSGT Willie de Leon Civic Center acted as an ad hoc family reunification center for victims and survivors. Some waited hours to learn their loved ones’ fates. People hugged each other and cried together, yet no one could truly comprehend what had just unfolded.

What Comes Next

As the investigation progressed, resources from around the state and country flowed into Uvalde in the hours after the shooting. FBI agents, DPS officers, Texas Rangers, the Texas Division of Emergency Management, DEA and ATF officials, Homeland Security investigators, and local law enforcement were all participating in the investigation.

Additional police and fire rescue support was brought in from San Antonio and surrounding areas. One SWAT team, an Eagle helicopter and a bomb squad were sent to Uvalde, and University Health System in San Antonio told The Well News it had received four victims from Robb Elementary.

Abbott said DPS criminal investigation, intelligence and counterterrorism, and crime and victim support divisions were doing their parts as well. Mental health services in the shooting’s immediate aftermath were made available to victims, survivors, families and law enforcement by the Family Resource Center at the Uvalde County Fairplex and crisis teams at the civic center.

The weapon used to perpetrate the massacre was an AR-15 fired with .223 rounds. Ramos purchased two AR platform rifles legally from a local sporting goods store on March 17 and March 20, along with 375 rounds of ammunition.

Ramos appears to have had no criminal history and no history of poor mental health. Other than the Facebook posts in the minutes leading up to the mass shooting, Abbott said there was “no meaningful forewarning” to the attack.

DPS Director Steven McGraw told reporters that Ramos was verbally confronted by a school district resource officer upon his arrival to the school but no gunfire was exchanged before he entered the building. It wasn’t clear if the door he entered was unlocked or if Ramos forced his way into the school.

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde in the state legislature, told The Well News he hopes there will be restrictions on assault rifles put in place going forward. Hopefully, he said, the issue won’t fall on deaf ears.

“I would tell the Second Amendment folks who want their guns — on these assault rifles, we have to have some restrictions on the access to them — especially to young men,” Gutierrez said. “And can we do that? Who knows, but those are the policy details we’re going to have to work out.”

Gutierrez said he was there to ensure that state resource allocation made it to Uvalde. He added that bereavement counseling will be one of the most important assets to recovery in Uvalde, just as it was for the community of Sutherland Springs after a 2017 mass shooting happened at a local church.

Additionally, Abbott encouraged parents to contact victim services at the Uvalde County Fairplex for further assistance with contacting their hospitalized children. He also said the Texas Health and Human Services Commission would be available to provide mental health support going forward.

During the press conference, however, Abbott made it clear the reaction by lawmakers wouldn’t be directed toward guns. Rather, he said the state must address the mental health crisis that burdens many in rural communities where there is little access to the kinds of resources that would have prevented this tragedy.

“And let me emphasize something that I know you all know,” Abbott said during the Wednesday press conference. “The reality is, as horrible as [this] was, it could have been worse.”

Utter Shock

Joe Chapa lost two family members on Tuesday. His younger cousins were among the victims of the gunman’s rampage. Chapa lives in San Antonio and works as a personal protection officer, but he’s from nearby Crystal City and knows the community well.

When family members told him of the tragic news, he decided to come to Uvalde for support. His stance on the underlying cause of the mass shooting was one that many share when these kinds of tragedies occur.

“It’s just sick kids. Nowadays, there’s no discipline anymore,” Chapa said. “Kids nowadays … need more guidance and they need to set goals for themselves. If they have goals then they’ll never do something like this.”

In Chapa’s view, the focus should be on addressing mental health disparities and not the weapons themselves.

“It’s a people problem,” he told The Well News. “The guns have nothing to do with it.”

In contrast, Uvalde resident Lupe Leija said he hoped some action would be taken to address the accessibility of firearms. Leija’s son was one of Robb Elementary’s survivors, and he told The Well News that he was doing well following the tragedy.

“I would tell [lawmakers] to be more strict about who gets to own a gun,” Leija said. “We can be at a grocery store and somebody can just walk in there and start shooting.”

As traumatizing as mass shooting events are for the people and communities involved, it usually doesn’t take long for the conversations to turn political. In this regard, Uvalde has been no different.

According to census data, Uvalde is over 78% Hispanic and just under 20% White. Uvalde County has voted Republican in every presidential election since 2000, according to data from the Secretary of State’s office, but both the state representative and senator who represent the area are Democrats.

So, when Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke caused a scene by interrupting the Texas officials holding the press conference on Wednesday, it appeared that politics were again being brought up in the face of tragedy.

‘Fixable’

“Governor Abbott, I have to say something,” O’Rourke said as he stormed to the front of the Uvalde High School Auditorium where the presser was being held.

The former United States congressman said that the time to stop the scourge of mass shootings was after 23 were killed and 23 others were wounded in an El Paso Walmart in 2019. His voice carried so loudly throughout the room that one could have thought he was miked, even as shouting erupted and drowned him out.

O’Rourke characterized the conference as “predictable” in his remarks and accused the Texas executives of complacency. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who was also present on stage, yelled at O’Rourke to “sit down.”

“This is on you until you choose to do something different,” O’Rourke said before leaving. “This will continue to happen. Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed just like they were killed in Uvalde yesterday.”

Eventually, O’Rourke was escorted from the premises by police. The verbal exchange lasted just a few minutes, but its intended effect had been accomplished.

Officials like Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick were quick to dismiss O’Rourke’s outburst as a campaign stunt before carrying on with the press conference. Meanwhile, his supporters were ecstatic with the showing and took to Twitter to echo the sentiments he expressed in his comments.

After the ruckus from O’Rourke’s confrontation had calmed down, attention shifted back to what could be done to solve the root cause of violent mass shootings. Abbott and the others on stage all agreed that more mass shootings could be prevented with suitable mental health resources while highlighting what they had already done to address them.

“It’s one of those issues that was widely discussed in the last several [legislative] sessions, and in particular during the 2019 session,” Abbott said. “Pretty much every issue was raised by one legislator or another about potential ways to address shootings like this.”

Consequently, Abbott signed 17 bills into law since the Santa Fe High School shooting in 2018 that dealt with school safety. These bills included measures to appropriate $150 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds for the Children’s Mental Health Consortium department, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan said.

But as Texas pledged monetary support for schools to deal with threats of violence, it also passed permitless carry law in 2021. Advocates have argued that the state’s lax gun regulations and lack of red flag laws will only stand to make the issue worse.

“I can tell you what we all agree upon,” Abbott said. “We’re going to go back and look at the shortcomings of what was passed and any shortcomings in implementation.”