‘Horrible nightmare’
A tight-knit Latino community in Texas was wracked with grief yesterday after a teen in body armour marched into an elementary school and killed 19 small children and two teachers, in the latest spasm of deadly gun violence in America.
Details of the atrocity, the victims and the 18-year-old suspect -- who was killed by police -- emerged as America grappled with its deadliest school shooting since the Sandy Hook tragedy in Connecticut a decade ago.
"This town is heartbroken, devastated," said Adolfo Hernandez, whose nephew was at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, a small community about an hour from the Mexican border, during the Tuesday shooting.
"We feel like there's a black cloud above this town," he told AFP. "You just want to pinch yourself and wake up from that horrible nightmare."
President Joe Biden addressed the grief-stricken nation in the hours after the attack, with a call on lawmakers to take on America's powerful gun lobby and enact tougher laws to curb gun violence.
"When in God's name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?" Biden asked, his voice slow and heavy with emotion.
In Uvalde, police had blocked off the area around the school yesterday and there was little traffic or pedestrian movement.
Identified as Salvador Ramos, the teen gunman was a resident of the town and a US citizen.
According to Texas Department of Public Safety officials, Ramos shot his grandmother before heading to Robb Elementary School around noon where he abandoned his vehicle and entered with a handgun and a rifle, wearing body armour.
Details have emerged of the suspect as a deeply troubled teen -- he was repeatedly bullied over a speech impediment that included a stutter and a lisp and once cut up his own face "just for fun," a former friend of Ramos, Santos Valdez, told The Washington Post.
Ramos barricaded himself in one classroom, killing two teachers and 19 children, CNN and other news outlets reported.
As shattered families shared the news on social media, the names of the murdered children, most of them of Latino heritage, began coming out: Ellie Garcia, Jayce Carmelo Luevanos, Uziyah Garcia...
"My little love is now flying high with the angels above," Angel Garza, whose daughter Amerie Jo Garza had just celebrated her 10th birthday, posted on Facebook.
More than a dozen children were also wounded in the attack at the school, which teaches more than 500 students aged around seven to 10 years old, mostly Hispanic and economically disadvantaged.
Despite recurring mass-casualty shootings, multiple initiatives to reform gun regulations have failed in the US Congress, leaving states and local councils to strengthen -- or weaken -- their own restrictions.
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