May 27 Texas school massacre news

Our live coverage of the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, has moved here.

The 18-year-old man who killed 21 people in Uvalde, Texas, earlier this week came out of a classroom closet and began firing when US Border Patrol agents entered the room, a source familiar with the situation told CNN.

Members of a specialized Border Patrol unit had entered the classroom, with one holding a shield followed by at least two others who engaged the shooter, according to a US Customs and Border Protection official.

The gunman is believed to have waited for the agents to enter the room, then kicked open the closet door and began shooting, the source said.

The agents had used a key to get into the classroom, opening the door while standing off to the side since the gunman had been shooting through the door, the source said.

The Washington Post first reported the detail on the gunman emerging from the classroom closet.

The law enforcement official who made the decision not to breach the Uvalde elementary school classroom where a gunman was shooting children and teachers was the school district police chief, officials said Friday.

Col. Steven McCraw, Texas Department of Public Safety director, didn’t mention the official’s name at a news conference Friday, but said the official made the “wrong decision” to not engage the gunman sooner.

The Uvalde School District police chief is Pedro “Pete” Arredondo.

“A decision was made that this was a barricaded subject situation,” McCraw said of the incident commander’s “thought process” at the time.

At the same time, children inside Robb Elementary School classrooms 111 and 112 in Uvalde repeatedly called 911 and pleaded for help, he said. They were in the middle of the deadliest school shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre.

“From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision,” McCraw said of the supervisor’s call not to confront the shooter. “It was the wrong decision. Period. There’s no excuse for that.”

Pressed by reporters whether Arredondo was on the scene during the shooting, McCraw declined to comment.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday he is demanding a full accounting of what happened during the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, but said he had no say in whether the school district’s police chief should be fired.

“As far as his employment status is concerned, that’s something that is beyond my control and I have no knowledge about,” said Abbott. “Every act of all of those officials will be known and identified and explained to the public.

The official has not spoken about the shooting publicly since two very brief press statements on the day of the tragedy. CNN attempted to reach Arredondo at his home on Friday, but there was no response.

Here’s what we know about the officer:

Read more here.

Salvador Ramos told girls he would rape them, showed off a rifle he bought, and threatened to shoot up schools in livestreams on the social media app Yubo, according to several users who witnessed the threats in recent weeks. 

But those users —all teens — told CNN that they didn’t take him seriously until they saw the news that 18-year-old Ramos had gunned down 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, this week.  

Three users said they witnessed Ramos threaten to commit sexual violence or carry out school shootings on Yubo, an app that is used by tens of millions of young people around the world.  

The users all said they reported Ramos’ account to Yubo over the threats. But it appeared, they said, that Ramos was able to maintain a presence on the platform. CNN reviewed one Yubo direct message in which Ramos allegedly sent a user the $2,000 receipt for his online gun purchase from a Georgia-based firearm manufacturer.

“Guns are boring,” the user responded. “No,” Ramos apparently replied. 

In a statement to CNN, a Yubo spokesperson said “we are deeply saddened by this unspeakable loss and are fully cooperating with law enforcement on their investigation.” Yubo takes user safety seriously and is “investigating an account that has since been banned from the platform,” the spokesperson said, but declined to release any specific information about Ramos’ account. 

Use of Yubo skyrocketed during the coronavirus pandemic, as teens trapped indoors turned to the app for a semblance of in-person interactions. The company says it has 60 million users around the world — 99% of whom are 25 and younger — and has trumpeted safety features including “second-by-second” monitoring of livestreams using artificial intelligence and human moderators.  

Despite those safety features, the users who spoke to CNN said Ramos made personal and graphic threats. During one livestream, Amanda Robbins, 19, said Ramos verbally threatened to break down her door and rape and murder her after she rebuffed his sexual advances. She said she witnessed Ramos threaten other girls with similar “acts of sexual assault and violence.” 

Robbins, who said she lives in California and only ever interacted with Ramos online, told CNN she reported him to Yubo several times and blocked his account, but continued seeing him in livestreams making lewd comments. 

“[Yubo] said if you see any behavior that’s not okay, they said to report it. But they’ve done nothing,” Robbins said. “That kid was allowed to be online and say this.”

Robbins and other users said they didn’t take Ramos’ comments seriously because troll-like behavior was commonplace on Yubo.  

Hannah, an 18-year-old Yubo user from Ontario, Canada, said she reported Ramos to Yubo in early April after he threatened to shoot up her school and rape and kill her and her mother during one livestream session. Hannah said Ramos was allowed back on the platform after a temporary ban.  

Hannah, who requested CNN withhold her last name to protect her privacy, said Ramos’ behavior turned increasingly brazen in the last week. In one livestream, she said, Ramos briefly turned his webcam to show a gun on his bed. 

The users said they didn’t make recordings of Ramos’ threats during the livestreams.

Yubo’s community guidelines tell users not to “threaten or intimidate” others, and ban harassment and bullying. Content that “promotes violence such as violent acts, guns, knives, or other weapons” is also banned. 

Just a week before the Uvalde attack, Yubo announced an expanded age verification process that involves users taking a photo of themselves and the app using artificial intelligence to estimate their age. The platform only allows people 13 and older to sign up, and doesn’t allow users 18 and older to interact with those under 18.

Yubo, which is based in Paris, has attracted controversy since it launched in 2015 under the name Yellow, with some local law enforcement officials warning about the possibility of abuse. Police have arrested men in Kentucky, New Jersey and Florida who allegedly used Yubo to meet or exchange sexually explicit messages with kids. Last month, Indiana police investigating the 2017 murder of two teenage girls said they were seeking information about a Yubo user who had solicited nude photos of underage girls on other social media platforms.   

Ramos’ disturbing social media interactions didn’t only take place on Yubo. One user, a girl from Germany who met Ramos on Yubo, said she had some troubling interactions with him via text and FaceTime. The 15-year-old said she received text messages from him shortly after he shot his grandmother and before his assault at the elementary school, as CNN previously reported. 

The girl said she thought any violent or strange comments Ramos made were in jest.  

But after the shooting, she said, “I added everything up and it made sense now… I was just too dumb to notice all the signals he was giving.” 

As a broken community tries to make sense of a massacre that took the lives of 19 young children and two teachers, authorities have offered shifting timelines of what happened inside the Uvalde, Texas, school.

On Friday, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw laid out the most detailed breakdown the public has received to date about the horror that unfolded in Robb Elementary School on May 24 — and attempted to offer some answers about the way authorities responded.

Among the details we know now are: that a school officer drove right past the shooter — 18-year-old Salvador Ramos — while Ramos fired at the school; that as many as 19 officers were inside the school more than 45 minutes before the suspect was killed; that the school district police chief decided not to breach the classroom where the shooter was; and that a young girl from the class called 911 several times asking for police while authorities were right outside.

CNN created a timeline of events with information provided by McCraw, social media posts and other reporting that offers a look into what came before the shooting:

Read a minute-by-minute breakdown into the attack — and how authorities responded to it here.

After asking the FBI “to produce a full, transparent, and public report on the shooting, the timeline, and the response by law enforcement,” Rep. Joaquin Castro, Democrat from Texas, tweeted that the FBI “does not believe the shooter was motivated by a particular ideology” and worked alone. He added that “the shooter was not on the FBI’s radar prior to the massacre.”

Castro wrote that the FBI has “mobilized extensive investigative resources to examine the timeline of events,” that they are “working alongside but independent of” Texas law enforcement, and that they are analyzing the shooter’s digital footprint to “build a clear timeline” around the shooting.

He also noted that “specialists from the FBI’s Victim Services Response Team will process all items in the school” that belong to the survivors of the shooting as well as its victims before returning them.

“Like most Texans and Americans, I’m deeply frustrated by the conflicting accounts that state authorities have provided about how events unfolded, and I’m disturbed by law enforcement’s failure to confront and stop the shooter sooner,” he said, adding that he will “press for answers” on if law enforcement knew about the danger the shooter posed before Tuesday.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday he is demanding a full accounting of what happened during the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, but noted that he had no say in whether the school district’s police chief should be fired.

“As far as his employment status is concerned, that’s something that is beyond my control and I have no knowledge about,” Abbott said.

The head of the Texas Department of Public Safety identified Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arrendondo Friday as the official who served as the incident commander and the person who made the decision for officers to wait and not breach the classroom where the gunman was located.

Arredondo has not spoken about the shooting publicly since two very brief press statements on the day of the tragedy.

“Every act of all of those officials will be known and identified and explained to the public,” Abbott said.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz rejected any new gun control measures in his speech Friday at the National Rifle Association (NRA) convention in Houston, saying instead that schools need single points of entry with multiple armed police officers or retired military members positioned there. 

“Ultimately, as we all know, what stops armed bad guys is armed good guys,” Cruz said. 

He later added: “We must not react to evil and tragedy by abandoning the Constitution or infringing on the rights of our law-abiding citizens.”

Cruz accused those advocating for new gun control measures in the wake of the Uvalde elementary school shooting of “demagoguing” and “virtue-signaling.” 

He said that “there have been too damn many of these killings; we must act decisively to stop them.” But he also said that gun control advocates proposals “wouldn’t have stopped these mass murders, and they know this.” 

Cruz also blamed a host of what he described as cultural problems for the increase in mass shootings. He pointed to “broken families, absent fathers, declining church attendance, social media bullying, violent online content, desensitizing the act of murder in video games, chronic isolation, prescription drug and opioid abuse” as among those problems. 

“It’s a lot easier to moralize about guns and to shriek about those you disagree with politically, but it’s never been about guns,” Cruz said. 

“It’s far easier to slander one’s political adversaries and to demand that responsible citizens forfeit their constitutional rights than it is to examine the cultural sickness giving birth to unspeakable acts of evil,” he said. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that he “absolutely” expects laws to be passed following the deadly Uvalde school shooting, focusing on health care and not gun legislation.

He also again cited Texas’ history when answering a question about 18-year-olds being able to purchase an AR-15.

“None of the laws that I signed this past session had any intersection with this crime at all. No law that I signed allowed him to get a gun, the gun that he did get. And so, again, there was nothing about the laws from this past session that has any relevancy to the crime that occurred here,” he said during a news conference.

As for the possibility of a special session, “all options are on the table,” he said.

“Do we expect laws to come out of this devastating crime? The answer is absolutely yes. There will be laws in multiple different subject areas,” Abbott said.

The governor said every law passed in the aftermath of the 2018 Santa Fe shooting will be “completely revisited” by officials.

“You can expect robust discussion, and my hope is laws passed that I will sign addressing health care in this state. There is an array of health care issues we face as a state in general, but there are an array of health care issues that relate to those who commit gun crimes in particular,” Abbott said.

“The status quo is unacceptable. This crime is unacceptable. We’re not going to be here talking about it and do nothing about it. We will be looking for the best laws that we can get passed to make our communities and schools safer,” he added.

The governor was also asked: “Would you consider at least a ban on an 18-year-old being able to buy an AR-15?”
He responded: “So for a century and a half, 18-year-olds could buy rifles, and we didn’t have school shootings. But we do now. Maybe we’re focusing our attention on the wrong thing.”

Abbott canceled his in-person appearance at the National Rifle Association conference in Houston, but did record a video that was shown prior to his briefing.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he was “misled” about certain information that he was given by law enforcement officials leading the investigation into the deadly school shooting in Uvalde.

“I was misled. I am livid about what happened. I was on this very stage two days ago, and I was telling the public information that had been told to me in a room just a few yards behind where we’re located right now. I wrote down hand notes in detail about what everybody in that room told me in sequential order about what happened. And when I came out here on this stage and told the public what happened, it was a recitation of what people in that room told me — whether it be law enforcement officials or non-law enforcement officials, whatever the case may be,” Abbott said during a news conference Friday in Uvalde.

“And as everybody has learned, the information that I was given turned out in part to be inaccurate. And I’m absolutely livid about that,” he said.

He said he expects authorities leading the investigation to “get to the bottom of every fact with absolute certainty” about the shooting.

More background: During a Friday news conference, Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw said the school district on-scene commander’s decision to not have officers immediately try to breach the classroom and confront the gunman was “wrong.” The Texas official said the commander at the time believed that the situation had “transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject.”

While officers waited outside adjoining classrooms at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, children inside the room repeatedly called 911 and pleaded for help, he said.

The damning revelation explained the lengthy wait between when officers first arrived to the school at 11:44 a.m. local time and when a tactical team finally entered the room and killed the gunman at 12:50 p.m. local time. The tactical team was able to enter using keys from a janitor, McCraw said.

Texas insurance companies and private donations will cover health care costs for the the injured victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting, Gov. Greg Abbott announced at a news briefing in Uvalde.

Abbott said every family impacted by the shooting has been assigned an advocate to support them.

In addition, air fare and lodging will be covered for victims’ families free of charge to help them get to Texas to be with their loved ones.

The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs has “a fund to pay for needed supplies right now, whether it be food or gas or other essential needs, and that money is available right now as we speak,” Abbott said.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott opened a news conference in Uvalde Friday afternoon by announcing free mental health care services and support for “the totality” of the community following Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.

“We have an abundance of mental health care services we’re going to provide,” Abbott said. “That includes state and private providers that will be providing mental health assistance to anyone in the community who needs it. When I say anyone, that means the totality of anybody who lives in this community. We believe that you would benefit from mental health care. We just want you to ask.”

The services can be accessed by calling the phone number 888-690-0799. The help line “will be answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” Abbott said, “whether it be today, tomorrow, next month, or next year.”

In pre-recorded remarks to the National Rifle Association convention in Houston, Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott said “as Texans and as Americans, we grieve and mourn these families” affected by the shooting in Uvalde.

“The courageous actions of the many teachers and staff at Robb Elementary School should be applauded,” Abbott added.

The Texas governor pointed to laws limiting the ownership or use of firearms, saying “just as laws didn’t stop the killing, we will not let his evil acts stop us from uniting the community that he tried to destroy.”

Shortly after his remarks aired at the conference, Abbott held a briefing about the shooting where he said new laws will “absolutely” be passed — but indicated they will be focused on health care and not gun legislation.

National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre told the audience at the conference that “every NRA member, and I know, every decent American is mourning right now,” but he insisted that “restricting the fundamental, human right of law-abiding Americans to defend themselves is not the answer, it never has been.”

When US Border Patrol agents who belong to a specialized unit responded to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, at around 12:15 p.m. local time, the officer in charge had already made the determination that it was a barricaded subject situation, according to a source familiar with the situation.

“They showed up from where they were and put together the operation hastily,” the source added. Some of the officers came from the field, including a stash house operation near the city of Eagle Pass, and some who were off duty also sped in to respond.  

The team then waited, not breaching the classroom where the shooter was holed up until nearly 40 minutes later. 

On Friday, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said members of the specialized unit known as the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC, began to arrive at 12:15 p.m. local time. He said they finally breached at 12:57 p.m. local time, after the incident commander had determined “they needed more equipment and officers to do a tactical breach.”

In incidents like the one Tuesday, where local authorities are in command of the scene, Border Patrol often serves in a support role and the agency on command will dictate what they do, the source said, adding that they try not to overrule the authorities. While the team would defer to the local command, if they felt there was a need to, they could override that. There is no indication yet this occurred at the school this week. 

Typically, in a situation like that, the source said, efforts are made to get people in the area — in this case, children — to safety.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement it had no additional information to offer at this time.

“It’s going to haunt them forever,” the source said, referring to the agents who responded and what they saw at the scene.

At a news conference Friday, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw said the person who made the decision not to breach the Uvalde elementary school classroom where a gunman was shooting children and teachers was the school district police chief, calling it the “wrong decision” to not engage the gunman sooner. 

The Uvalde School District Police Chief is Pedro “Pete” Arredondo.

“A decision was made that this was a barricaded subject situation,” McCraw said of the incident commander’s “thought process” at the time.

Pressed by reporters if Arredondo was on the scene during the shooting, McCraw declined to comment. 

Arredondo is identified on the Uvalde School District website as the police chief and was introduced as the police chief at news conferences on Tuesday in the hours following the shooting at Robb Elementary.

At the news conferences, Arredondo stated the gunman was deceased, but provided little other information on the massacre, citing an “active investigation” and taking no questions from those gathered.

CNN attempted to reach Arredondo at his home on Friday, but there was no response. 

Arredondo has nearly three decades of law enforcement experience, according to the school district, and he was recently elected to a seat on Uvalde’s city council. 

A board of trustees for the school district approved Arredondo to head the department in 2020. The district’s superintendent, Hal Harrell, said in a Facebook post at the time that the board was “confident with our selection and impressed with his experience, knowledge, and community involvement.”

Arredondo told The Uvalde Leader-News after his appointment that he was happy to return to work in his hometown and that he wanted to emphasize education and training at the police department. “We can never have enough training,” he told the newspaper. 

In March, Arredondo posted on Facebook that his department was hosting an “active shooter training” at Uvalde High School in an effort to prepare local law enforcement to respond to “any situation that may arise.” A flyer for the event he posted stated that topics covered would include priorities for school-based law enforcement and how to “stop the killing.” 

Arredondo previously served as a captain at a school-district police department in Laredo, Texas, and in multiple roles at the Uvalde Police Department. 

Anthony Barksdale, CNN law enforcement analyst and former acting Baltimore Police Commissioner, offered some context as to why larger law enforcement agencies responding Tuesday to the deadly mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, were taking commands from the school district’s police chief as they arrived on scene. 

“The incident command system comes from the fire fights in California in the 70s.  It establishes who is in charge,” Barksdale told CNN’s Victor Blackwell and Alisyn Camerota. “So, if the chief says, ‘I’m the incident commander’, then he’s in charge. And every resource that falls under him has to follow what he or she says, because that’s ultimately the boss at the time.”

But if officers on the scene of an incident come to believe the “incident commander” is making the wrong calls, they can ignore or overrule his decisions, Barksdale said. “And you face him later on and… deal with it,” he added.

“This was a case where they should have kept the pressure up; kept engaged trying to breach that door and deal with this shooter,” Barksdale continued. “If things get quiet, if there’s a lull, maybe there’s a weapon malfunction. Maybe he’s trying to reload. Maybe he’s out of ammo. And that’s the time to get him. You keep going; you pour it on. You put the pressure on, and you don’t stop until that threat is completely incapacitated.”  

“You’re going in there to kill this shooter. Those little kids deserved that on that day,” said an emotional Barksdale. “And they didn’t get it.”

More background: During a Friday news conference, Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw said the school district on-scene commander’s decision to not have officers immediately try to breach the classroom and confront the gunman was “wrong.” The Texas official said the commander at the time believed that the situation had “transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject.”

While officers waited outside adjoining classrooms at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, children inside the room repeatedly called 911 and pleaded for help, he said.

The damning revelation explained the lengthy wait between when officers first arrived to the school at 11:44 a.m. local time and when a tactical team finally entered the room and killed the gunman at 12:50 p.m. local. The tactical team was able to enter using keys from a janitor, McCraw said.

CNN’s Eric Levenson, Virginia Langmaid, Shimon Prokupecz and Nora Neus contributed reporting to this post. 

Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said on Twitter that the committee will hold a hearing on gun violence on June 15, following the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. 

“[The] government announcement this week that the number one cause of death for kids and teenagers in America is guns has led us to set a hearing in the middle of June, about two weeks from now, and that’s going to be on the issue of guns and children across America,” Durbin said in a video posted on his Twitter account.

See his tweet:

Alfred Garza, the father of 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, told CNN Friday that while nothing can bring his daughter back after the deadly mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, he believes someone should be held accountable over the police response — in particular regarding the time it took officers to engage with the gunman.

During a Friday news conference, Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw said the school district police chief’s decision to not have officers immediately try to breach the classroom and engage the gunman was “wrong.”

The chief, serving as incident commander during the shooting, thought officers were dealing with a barricaded subject and not an active shooter at the time, McCraw said.

Speaking to CNN’s Jason Carroll, Garza said he wondered if his daughter and others may have survived if authorities had acted sooner. 

“By the time the cops got there, it was already too late, you know, so they needed to act immediately,” Garza told CNN.

Garza said he he understands the anger some parents are feeling in the aftermath of shooting, and called for accountability and “consequences.”

“We need to make sure that, from this point on, that something like this does not happen again, or that we are better prepared,” he said. 

“The circumstances around this event, I mean it’s bad, right? I mean, people literally died. My daughter died, and I feel just as bad for everybody else,” he continued. “Somebody needs to be held responsible.”

Garza said he’s been told his daughter may have been one of those who tried to call 911 from the classroom in which the gunman had locked himself in. Authorities have said there were at least two calls to 911 from children during the deadly shooting.

Yesterday, CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed Amerie’s stepfather, med aide Angel Garza, who described how he learned about the death of the 10-year-old as he arrived to the school during the shooting to help.

“One little girl was just covered in blood head to toe. I thought she was injured, I asked her what was wrong. She said she was OK — she was hysterical, saying that they shot her best friend, that they killed her best friend, she was not breathing,” Garza told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday.

“I asked the little girl the name, and … she said Amerie,” he said, dropping his head and weeping.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw on Friday gave a detailed timeline of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24 that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

Here are the key moments he laid out (all times are in Central Standard Time):

11:27 a.m.: Video shows that an exterior door to Ross Elementary School that gunman Salvador Ramos entered was propped open by a teacher.

11:28 a.m: Ramos crashes a vehicle near the school into a ditch, gets out and begins firing upon two people who came outside to see the crash near a funeral home. Civilians are not struck by gunfire. The teacher runs to a room to get a phone, returns to the door, and the door remains open. 

11:30 a.m.: The first 911 call is made to Uvalde police reporting a car crash and a man with a gun outside the school.

11:30 a.m.: The US Marshals Service says it received a call from a Uvalde police officer requesting assistance.  

11:31 a.m.: The shooting suspect reaches the last row of cars in the school parking lot and shooting begins outside of the school. Patrol vehicles reach the funeral home, and a patrol car drives by shooter, who is hunkered down by another vehicle.

11:32 a.m.: The suspect fires at the school. 

11:33 a.m.: The suspect enters the school and begins shooting into a classroom. He shot more than 100 rounds.

11:35 a.m.: A total of seven officers are on the scene, and three officers enter the school, later followed by an additional team of three more officers and a sheriff. Two of the initial officers received grazing wounds from the suspect while the classroom door was closed.

11:37 a.m.: Sixteen rounds were fired from 11:37 a.m. to 11:44 a.m.

11:43 a.m.: Robb Elementary announces on Facebook that “Robb Elementary is under a Lockdown Status due to gunshots in the area.”

11:51 a.m.: More officers arrive.

12:03 p.m.: As many as 19 officers are in the school’s hallway. 

12:03 p.m.: A girl in room 112 of the school makes a 911 call.

12:10 p.m.: A 911 call is received from the same girl in room 112, reporting multiple people are dead.

12:13 p.m.: The girl makes another 911 call.

12:15 p.m.: Border Patrol’s tactical unit BorTac team arrives on scene.

12:16 p.m.: The same girl makes another 911 call, reporting there were “eight to nine students alive.”

12:17 p.m.: Robb Elementary announces on Facebook: “There is an active shooter at Robb Elementary. Law enforcement is on site. Your cooperation is needed at this time by not visiting the campus. As soon as more information is gathered it will be shared. The rest of the district is under a Secure Status.”

12:19 p.m.: A different 911 call is received from a caller in room 111, but the caller hung up after another student told them to.

12:21 p.m.: Suspect fires again.

12:21 p.m.: Another 911 call is received, and three shots fired are heard.  

12:21 p.m.: Officers move down the hallway.

12:36 p.m.: There is a 911 call that last 21 seconds, with a student saying, “he shot the door.”  

12:43 and 12:47 p.m.: 911 caller says “please send police now.” 

12:46 p.m.: 911 caller can hear police next door.

12:50 p.m.: Shots are heard being fired over the 911 call.

12:50 p.m.: Law enforcement breach door using keys from janitor and kill suspect. 

12:51 p.m.: On 911 call, it sounds like officers are moving children out of the room.

Chilling details continue to emerge about Tuesday’s mass shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

One of the young survivors told CNN that she and her classmates were watching a movie when the shooter entered her room and shot her teacher and many of her friends.

According to officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety, the shooter was in the school for up to an hour and had barricaded himself inside adjoining classrooms.

As all this was taking place, parents had joined dozens of law enforcement officers outside the school, desperate to know if their children were still alive.

Pete Luna, the general manager of The Uvalde Leader-News, was among those outside, waiting for a positive development. He then saw a group of children who were escaping through windows with the help of law enforcement. Luna’s photos are some of the few that CNN has seen from that turbulent time when the gunman was still in the school.

View more photos here.

Taking a question from CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz during Friday’s news conference, FBI special agent Oliver Rich, who leads the FBI’s San Antonio field office, addressed the possibility of an “independent investigation” into the mass shooting.

“First, I want to say I understand there are a lot of questions and a lot of frustration in and our hearts go out to the families and victims of this tragedy,” Rich said.

“We are here to assist in the investigation, to provide the support to the community,” he continued, citing a total of 200 people from the bureau who he said have been working in Uvalde over the past four days. “We have people working all across the country to support this community and to support this investigation. We are continuing in that vein.”

“If the facts bear out that there is a federal nexus, then the FBI will conduct an appropriate investigation at that time,” Rich concluded. “But for now, we continue in this to support the Texas Rangers.”

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said there were at least two calls to 911 from children during the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School.

He laid out one of the calls. McCraw did not provide the name of a girl who called and did not release the audio, saying it’s better that he reads it “than you listen to it.”

Here’s the timeline from him:

While taking questions from reporters during Friday’s news conference, Col. Steven McCraw of the Texas Department of Public Safety criticized some aspects of the police response to the shooting, in particular regarding the time it took for officers to engage with the gunman.

“A decision was made that this was a barricaded subject situation,” McCraw said of the incident commander’s “thought process” at the time.

Rather than immediately try to breach the classroom and engage with the gunman, McCraw said the commander — who he later identified as the school district’s chief of police — decided that “there was time to retrieve the keys, and wait for a tactical team with the equipment to go ahead and breach the door and take on the subject.”

“We believe there should have been an entry as soon as you can,” McCraw continued. “When there’s an active shooter, the rules change.”

The revelation explains the lengthy wait between when officers first arrived to the school at 11:44 a.m. local time and when a tactical team finally entered the room and killed the gunman at 12:50 p.m. local time. The tactical team was able to enter using keys from a janitor, McCraw said.

Hear the Texas official during the press conference here:

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CNN’s Nora Neus, Eric Levenson, Michelle Krupa and Elizabeth Wolfe contributed reporting to this post. 

The Uvalde shooter did not post publicly on Facebook that he shot his grandmother and then was going to shoot at a school, Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw said. It was a private message on a Facebook application, he said.

The shooter, Salvador Ramos, asked his sister in September 2021 to help him buy a gun, and she “flatly refused,” McCraw said.

In Instagram chats with four people in March, he discussed buying a gun, McCraw said.

On March 3, one person wrote, “word on the street is you’re buying a gun.” Ramos replied, “just bought something rn,” McCraw said.

On March 14, there was an Instagram post by Ramos in quotations “10 more days.”

“A user replied, ‘are you going to shoot up a school or something?’ The subject replied, ‘no and stop asking dumb questions, and you’ll see,’ McCraw said.

Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw outlined the ammunition that was found at the school and on the gunman.

There were a total of 58 magazines at the school related to the crime scene, he said:

There were two magazines in the suspect’s residence, for a total of 60 magazines.

The gunman purchased and had a total of 1,657 total rounds of ammunition, 315 of the rounds were inside the school and 142 of those were spent cartridges.

After firing “multiple shots” outside, the gunman entered Robb Elementary in Uvalde at 11:33 a.m. local time, Col. Steven McCraw of the Texas Department of Public Safety said at a news conference on Friday.

“The suspect begins shooting into room 111 or 112. It’s not possible to determine from the video angle that we have at this point in time,” McCraw said.

Police officers were also inside the school within minutes, having entered using the same door as the gunman. “A total of seven officers were on the scene,” McCraw said, by 11:35 a.m., which is approximately when two of those officers were shot — “grazing wounds,” he clarified — near the door to the classroom the gunman was in.

The gunman then continued to fire inside the classroom, with the door closed and locked, McCraw said.

“He had purchased and had a total of 1,657 total rounds of ammunition,” McCraw said, and fired nearly 200 rounds during his rampage. Authorities found 142 spent cartridges inside the school, with another 22 found outside on school property and another 22 again found at the site of the gunman’s crashed car.

Another 173 live rounds from the gunman’s supplies were found inside the school.

Thirty-five spent law enforcement cartridges were also located inside the school. “Eight of those were in the hallway,” McCraw said, and “27 were inside classroom 111, where the suspect was killed.” 

CNN’s Shawn Nottingham contributed reporting.

Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw said that when law enforcement arrived to the two classrooms that the gunman shot into, the doors were locked and they breached the door using a janitor’s keys.

They killed the suspect once they entered the room.

Texas Department of Public Safety Col. Steven McCraw outlined today at a news conference the timeline of the shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School.

At 11:27 a.m. local time, a teacher propped open the exterior door that the shooter eventually entered the school, according to video evidence, McCraw said.

At 11:28 a.m., the gunman crashed a vehicle near the school into a ditch. Two men at a funeral home went to the crash scene and they began running when the gunman shot at them.

The teacher then ran to retrieve a phone and walked back to exit door. The door remained propped open.

The teacher called 911 at 11:30 a.m. local time. One minute later, the gunman started walking in the school parking lot and shooting into classroom windows.

Patrol cars got to the funeral home at the same time, he said.

A school resource officer was not on the scene, McCraw said, but heard the 911 call and drove to the area. The officer sped to who he thought was the suspect, driving right by the actual suspect who was hunkered down by a vehicle.

Multiple shots were fired at the school starting at 11:32 a.m., he said.

The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) are giving an update right now at a news conference about Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, as questions emerge about their response.

Some background: A Texas law enforcement official said Thursday the 18-year-old gunman who killed 21 people at the elementary school was not confronted by police before he entered the school, contradicting earlier comments from authorities and raising further questions about the police response to the massacre.

The official’s comments came in a news conference that added further confusion to the timeline of Tuesday’s horrific shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead. The massacre marked the deadliest US school shooting in nearly a decade and was at least the 30th school shooting at a K-12 school in 2022. And it has thrown the nation — where active shooter attacks jumped more than 50% last year — yet again into a fury of anger and grief amid renewed calls for gun laws reform.

CNN’s Eric Levenson, Holly Yan and Joe Sutton contributed reporting to this post.

The United States Marshals Service said its deputies responded to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, after receiving a call for assistance at 11:30 a.m. local time.

After driving nearly 70 miles, deputies arrived at 12:10 p.m. local time, USMS said in a statement posted to Twitter.

“The first Deputy US Marshals who arrived on scene entered the school to assist BORTAC and other law enforcement already engaging with the shooter,” the statement said, referring to the tactical unit of the United States Border Patrol.

“These Deputy US Marshals also rendered emergency trauma first aid for multiple victims. Additional Deputy U.S. Marshals were asked to expand and secure the official law enforcement perimeter around the school,” the statement said, adding that deputy marshals never arrested or placed anyone in handcuffs.

Members of the USMS can be seen in a widely circulated social media video in which police are holding back parents pleading to enter Robb Elementary school as the violence unfolded.

The children who survived the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde are now reeling from the trauma of fearing for their lives and seeing their friends die.

These are their stories.

Jayden Perez

The moment his class heard gunfire, Jayden Perez’s teacher locked the door and told her students to “hide and be quiet.” 

“It was very terrifying because I never thought that was going to happen,” Jayden told CNN. “(I’m) still sad about some of my friends that died.”

During the interview, Jayden started recalling the names of the deceased with whom he was friends. Then he stopped, looked at a row of crosses behind him bearing their names and said, “basically all of them.” 

When asked if he ever wants to go back to school, the fourth grader was clear and concise.

“No, because after what happened, I don’t want to. I don’t want anything to do with another shooting or me in the school,” Jayden said. “And I know it might happen again, probably.”

Edward Timothy Silva

Second grader Edward Timothy Silva’s class was located near the fourth grade classroom when he heard “loud noises,” he said, which sounded “kind of like fireworks.”

“I have the fear of guns now because I’m scared someone might shoot me,” he said.

His mother, Amberlynn Diaz teared up, saying this is the first time she’d heard her son say that.

“It breaks my heart,” Diaz said. “He was asking me, does he have to go to school next year? And I just don’t want him to be afraid of school. I want him to continue learning and not be scared of going back to school. I want him to have a normal life again.”

Miah Cerillo

11-year-old Miah Cerillo was in the fourth grade classroom where her friends and teachers were shot. When the shooter went to an adjoining classroom, she said she was scared that he would come back and shoot again. She put her hands in her friend’s blood, who was dead next to her, and then smeared it all over herself to appear dead.

She spoke exclusively to CNN about her horrific experience that day, but declined to speak to any men because of what happened. She said she feels comfortable only speaking to women and also did not want to go on camera.

Cerillo was hit by fragments of the bullets, and they are visible on her back, shoulders and the back of her head.

She told CNN that overnight, a lot of her hair fell out in big clumps from where the fragments had hit. Her parents say she is not sleeping, and Cerillo also said she keeps seeing bodies on the ground.

Her parents have started GoFundMe specifically to pay for her therapy.

Maranda Mathis, 11, has been identified as one of the victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting, according to the city of Uvalde’s website.

The Washington Post also spoke with Leslie Ruiz, who identified herself as a friend of Maranda’s mother.

Ruiz told the Washington Post that the 11-year-old was a “bright girl” who was “fun” and “spunky.” She said that Maranda’s best friend was her brother and he was also in the school when the shooting happened. 

On Wednesday, Maranda’s cousin, Deanna Miller, expressed her grief on Facebook, writing, “My sweet baby cousin we loved u dearly I’m so sorry this happen to u baby please keep my family in your prayers.” 

The city of Uvalde has posted the names and photos of the 21 victims. 

Correction: An earlier version of this post had the incorrect spelling of the victim’s first name.

The names and photos of all 21 victims from the shooting at Robb Elementary School have been listed on the city of Uvalde’s website.

It includes information on where to send donations for a memorial fund, as well as a link to resources.

“We are working on setting up an online option for donations and will post that information as soon as we have that ready,” according to the city’s site.

Ten-year-old Rojelio Torres has been identified as one of the victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting, his aunt Precious Perez confirmed to CNN affiliate KSAT. 

Perez said the entire family waited almost 12 hours to find out if her nephew was one of the victims.

“We are devastated and heartbroken. Rojer was a very intelligent, hardworking and helpful person. He will be missed and never forgotten,” Perez told KSAT. 

Prior to learning about his passing, Rojelio’s father, Federico Torres, spoke with CNN affiliate KHOU. In a very somber interview he told the affiliate he learned about the shooting through friends and left work to rush to the school where officials did not give him information right away. 

In a Facebook post, Rojelio’s mother, Evadulia Orta, posted a photo of her son and wrote “RIP to my son Rojelio Torres we love you and miss you.”

A 10-year old girl has been discharged from University Hospital San Antonio, Dr. Lillian Liao said Friday. 

Liao said she was happy to report that one of the children who was injured in the Robb Elementary school shooting was discharged.

“So we’re currently caring for two children and one adult patient at University Hospital,” Liao said.

A 66-year old woman remains in serious condition. A 10-year old girl is also in serious condition and a 9-year old is in good condition, according to the hospital.

Maite Rodriguez, 10, has been identified as a victim of the Robb Elementary School shooting, her mother Ana Rodriguez confirmed in a post on her Facebook page.

Rodriguez said her daughter dreamed of becoming a marine biologist and had her heart set on attending Texas A&M in Corpus Christi.

On Facebook, Rodriguez dedicated a lengthy post to her daughter where she said she wanted everyone to know that Maite was “sweet, charismatic, loving, caring, loyal, free, ambitious, funny, silly, goal driven,” and her best friend.

She wrote that her daughter loved animals, photography and learned to sew on her own by watching YouTube videos. 

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Rodriguez called Gov. Greg Abbott an “embarrassment to Texas,” and said that his refusal to even consider stronger gun laws after what happened on Tuesday is “inexcusable.”

“In my opinion, nobody’s brain is fully developed at the age 18. You’re still a child, and what would a child do with an AR? I guess we all know now,” she said. 

Abbott has said that tightening gun laws would not prevent mass shootings and regularly tweets about guns and his support for gun owners. He’s signed laws making Texas an open carry state for handguns and on public university campuses.

Rodriguez also told the magazine her daughter was smart, competitive and determined.

Eleven-year-old Miah Cerrillo, who survived the massacre in the fourth-grade classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, said she smeared her friend’s blood on herself to appear dead in case the shooter came back.

She spoke exclusively to CNN about her horrific experience that day, but declined to speak to any men because of what happened and only feels comfortable speaking to women. She also did not want to go on camera.

Miah and her classmates were watching “Lilo & Stitch” when her teachers Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia got an email notifying them of a shooter in the school. CNN spoke to both Miah and her mother.

One teacher “went to the door and he was right there — they made eye contact,” Neus told CNN’s John Berman. “Mia says it just happened all so fast. He backed the teacher into the classroom. He made eye contact with the teacher, again, looked her right in the eye and said ‘goodnight’ and then shot her and killed her.”

At this point, he opened fire in the classroom, which hit the other teacher and a lot of Miah’s friends.

Miah was hit by fragments of the bullets, too. They are visible on her back, on her shoulders and the back of her head, Neus reported.

The shooter then went into the adjoining classroom, and Miah told CNN that she could hear screams, a lot more gunfire, and then she said she heard music.

“She thinks it was the gunman that put it on. He started blasting sad music,” Neus said. “She just said it sounded like ‘I want people to die’ music.”

Miah said she was scared the gunman would come back to kill her and a few other surviving friends. So, she put her hands in her friend’s blood, who laid next to her— and already looked dead—and then smeared it all over herself to appear dead. 

She and a friend also managed to grab her dead teacher’s phone and call 911 for help. She says she told a dispatcher, “please send help because we’re in trouble.”

Miah says she thought she was there for three hours, but her mother then said, “sweetheart, I think it was closer to one hour but I’m sure it felt that way.”

As she laid there, Miah thought the police just hadn’t reached the campus, she told CNN.

She says afterwards, she overheard talk of police waiting outside the school. Recounting this during the interview, she started crying, saying she just didn’t understand why they didn’t come inside and get them.

Now, Miah is living through the trauma and her parents have started GoFundMe specifically to pay for her therapy.

WATCH: 11-year-old says she used her friend’s blood to play dead in classroom

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An off-duty US Customs and Border Patrol officer heard there was an active shooter at Robb Elementary School and ran out of a barbershop as fast as he could. 

Jacob Albarado told The New York Times he had just sat down for a haircut when he got a text message from his wife, Trisha, a fourth-grade teacher at the elementary school, that there was an active shooter in the building. Their daughter, a second-grader at Robb Elementary, was locked in a bathroom, and she texted him.  

He borrowed a shotgun from his barber and sped to the scene. 

According to an interview with NYT, Albarado saw that a tactical team was already forming to enter the wing where the shooter was holed up, so he and several other officers on the scene came up with a plan to evacuate as many children as possible. 

Albarado said he led the team toward the wing of the school where his daughter was. “I’m looking for my daughter, but I also know what wing she’s in,” he said, “so I start clearing all the classes in her wing.” 

When he finally found his 8-year-old daughter Jayda, he hugged her, but then quickly kept rescuing other children. 

The children were “hysterical” as the team guided them out of the building and onto the sidewalk, bring out dozens of kids and teachers. 

“I did what I was trained to do,” Albarado told the NYT.

Jayden Perez trained for days like Tuesday. But the 10-year-old never thought it would happen. The moment he and his classmates heard gunfire, he said his teacher at Robb Elementary School locked the door and told her students to “hide and be quiet.” 

“It was very terrifying because I never thought that was going to happen,” Jayden told CNN. “(I’m) still sad about some of my friends that died.”

During the interview, Jayden started calling the names of the deceased with whom he was friends. Then he stopped, looked at a row of crosses behind him bearing their names and said, “Basically all of them.” 

Now, the fourth-grader said he is scared it will happen again. 

When asked if he ever wants to go back to school, he was clear and concise.

“No, because after what happened. I don’t want to. I don’t want anything to do with another shooting or me in the school,” Jayden said.

“And I know it might happen again, probably.”

Jayden said he was hiding near the storage area for backpacks during the shooting, while others in his class were under a table. The entire time, he said, he wondered what was going to happen to them.

About 90 minutes before the shooting, his family celebrated Jayden’s achievement of making the honor roll. 

When reunited with his family, his mother was the first to give him a hug. 

Now the child is reminding everyone to hug those you love, while you can.

“You never know when you can lose someone close to you,” Jayden said.

Hear from the 10-year-old survivor here:

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Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10, who was killed in Tuesday’s massacre, was passionate about school, her father Jessie Rodriguez told CNN’s Pamela Brown.

 “Even when she was sick, she didn’t like to miss a day of school,” he said.

“As she was growing up, she’d always tell me she wanted to be a veterinarian. She was always challenging new things. She liked to work with me since I’m a carpenter, so, she liked to learn how to do whatever I did. She learned to rip carpet out, cut linoleum for me. Her and her twin sister would always be at work trying to help me doing something, painting or something,” he said.

Rodriguez noted that Annabell was protective of her twin sister and that the pair were close. 

“They did everything together. Now, it going to be a big gap there. She’s going to have to learn to grow into, as well as me,” he said. 

The father also spoke about Annabell’s cousin, Jackie Cazares, who was also killed on Tuesday. He described Jackie as smart and taught his twins how to use their phones, and that the three played together often.

When asked about the amount of time the gunman was in the school and the other details released by authorities, Rodriguez said “it’s very upsetting.”

“As a father, I would have just went in. I don’t need nobody to tell me to go in and defend harmless children. Why wait … you’re officers serving the peace and protect us, protect our children. 
“And, one hour being in there is too long — that’s just too much. Should have been within minutes. 
“I believe the officers at that point should have went in and took control and not let this man finish off with them, one at a time.”

Edward Timothy Silva, a second-grade student, told CNN on Thursday about what it was like being inside Robb Elementary School at the time of the mass shooting that killed 19 children and two adults.

Edward Timothy’s class was located near the fourth-grade classroom when he heard “loud noises,” he said. “Kind of like fireworks.”

A woman who works for the school told them to hide, he said, as the lights were turned off inside of the classroom.

“I learned that we were having a real drill. Because we’ve practiced a lot. I think we were safe because we practiced,” Edward Timothy said.

He started learning such drills in kindergarten, he said. Some of his classmates in the room were crying, Edward Timothy said.

Later, his class and others “ran out of their classrooms,” he said. Officials have said all fatalities and injuries at Robb Elementary took place inside one classroom. 

When asked what he is afraid of now, Edward Timothy said, “I have the fear of guns now because I’m scared someone might shoot me.”

His mother, Amberlynn Diaz, then teared up, saying this is the first time she’d heard her son say that.

“It breaks my heart,” Diaz said. “He was asking me, does he have to go to school next year? And I just don’t want him to be afraid of school. I want him to continue learning and not be scared of going back to school. I want him to have a normal life again.”

Government statements are not adding up. Gaps and discrepancies are raising alarms. Elected officials are failing to answer the public’s questions.

This is a moment when journalists are needed. And a moment when journalists have to get it right.

Unfortunately the subject matter is utterly heartbreaking: The deaths of 19 children and 2 adults at Robb Elementary. How was the gunman able to murder so many people? Why wasn’t he stopped sooner? Who was responsible for the police response? Why were so many of the initial accounts incorrect, according to newer statements? What should we believe?

Questions about the police response were front and center all day Thursday, due in large part to parents who spoke up, backed up by amateur video clips of Tuesday’s chaotic crime scene. Most of their questions have not been answered. Frustrations have been boiling over.

“We’ve been given a lot of bad information,” CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz said at Thursday afternoon’s press conference.
“These parents deserve to know exactly what happened, minute by minute, to their children,” Anderson Cooper said to Prokupecz later in the day.

I checked in with Marc Duvoisin, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, the daily newspaper closest to Uvalde. He agreed with my perception that Thursday was a turning point in the coverage of the shooting.

Read the full story here:

Related article Texas newspaper editor says 'urgent questions' about Uvalde massacre have not been answered | CNN Business

The mother of Uvalde school shooter Salvador Ramos said she was in shock and asked for forgiveness after her son shot and killed 21 people at an elementary school in Texas on Tuesday.

“I have no words, I have no words to say, I don’t know what he was thinking. He had his reasons for doing what he did and please don’t judge him. I only want the innocent children who died to forgive me,” Adriana Martinez told CNN affiliate Televisa.

Martinez described Ramos as “quiet.”

“He was very quiet. He was himself. He didn’t bother anyone — he didn’t do anything to anyone,” she told Televisa.

His grandfather told CNN on Thursday that he knows many of the families affected by the massacre.

“Some of them are my friends, and I’m going to have to face them some day,” Rolando Reyes said.

Reyes’ wife was the first victim that day, shot in the face at their home before Ramos drove to Robb Elementary School and killed 21 people.

A bullet pierced the jaw and upper cheek of his wife, Reyes said, and she will need significant reconstructive surgery at a hospital in San Antonio.

The shooter’s grandmother “did everything for him,” Reyes said, including cooking and picking him up from late work shifts at a fast-food restaurant, and he does not understand why the 18-year-old would lash out at her.

Reyes is the father of Ramos’ mother, who has been crying so much since the shooting that one of her eyes is almost swollen shut, he said.

WATCH: Gunman’s mother speaks out: ‘Forgive me, forgive my son’

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Some Republicans have an odd way of not politicizing the horrific Texas school massacre.

Despite accusing Democrats of constantly trying to manipulate mass shootings for political gain, several senior GOP figures — including ex-President Donald Trump — are expected to give speeches at the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action’s annual leadership forum on Friday.

The NRA is the highly politicized body that spent decades radicalizing the GOP on guns and tearing down moderate firearm laws, resulting in a torrent of high-powered weapons finding their way into private hands — like the kind an 18-year-old gunman bought legally and used to kill 19 children and two teachers on Tuesday.

And the group’s annual meetings are taking place in Houston only three days after and about 275 miles to the east of the spot where innocent children were gunned down in their classroom in the city of Uvalde. The assault was both shocking in its barbarism but not at all surprising as it was just the latest mass shooting in America’s endless cycle of gun violence.

Read the full analysis:

Convention attendants walk past some of the signage in the hallways outside of the exhibit halls at the NRA Annual Meeting held at the George R. Brown Convention Center Thursday, May 26, 2022, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

Related article Republicans heading to NRA convention expose hypocrisy of blaming Democrats for politicizing mass shootings | CNN Politics

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed the school massacre in Texas for the first time publicly Thursday, calling it “unfathomable.”

“I have to tell you,  it’s really hard to look at the images on TV of these children, ten years old, each with their own story. Each so vibrant, each with so much ahead of them,” Blinken said at an event celebrating Eid at the State Department. 

Blinken said they “all have them in their hearts,” and referenced a previous speaker’s comment about “the need to recommit ourselves to empathy.”

“I hope that that part of the spirit of Ramadan is something that we can take from this evening and every evening and think about that, think about that in our own lives,” he said. “It’s so important.”

A spokesperson for Daniel Defense, the manufacturer of a firearm used in the Robb Elementary School shooting, told CNN the company has no plans to attend this weekend’s NRA meeting in Houston, Texas. 

“Daniel Defense is not attending the National Rifle Association (“NRA”) meeting due to the horrifying tragedy in Uvalde, Texas where one of our products was criminally misused. We believe this week is not the appropriate time to be promoting our products in Texas at the NRA meeting,” Steve Reed, vice president of marketing, said in an email.

The company also issued a statement on its website calling the shooting an “evil act.”  

“We are deeply saddened by the tragic events in Texas this week,” the statement said.

Daniel Defense said the company will cooperate with “all federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities in their investigations.”

The parents of the victims from Robb Elementary School in Uvalde deserve a complete accounting of what happened during the shooting, Texas state senator Roland Gutierrez said Thursday.  

“I’ve talked to the troopers, I’ve talked to the (Texas) Rangers, they suggested that over the course of the next 24 to 36 hours we should have a full-blown report,” Gutierrez told CNN’s Don Lemon.
“Listen, this isn’t rocket science, everything is on video in there. And we deserve to know what happened, these parents deserve to know what happened.”

Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district covers Uvalde County, said nothing he has seen so far has been “satisfactory.”

“At the end of the day I understand that this is an active investigation, but the shooter is dead,” he said. “We’re not talking about motive anymore. We have to figure out where there was a failure and if there was a failure.”

Gutierrez said he knows “there was a failure here,” and that he has seen video of law enforcement entering the building and well as the standoff that took place.

“I don’t want to ‘Monday morning quarterback’ this thing but at the end of the day we have to find out for the future, so that this never happens again, what kind of failures happened,” he said.
“And I feel in this situation standing back was not the thing to do.”
“There’s no way in the world that an 18-year-old kid should access a militarized weapon like it happened in this situation,” he said. “And I put that on people that are in power in Texas.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — who was scheduled to speak Friday on the first day of the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting — is canceling his in-person appearance to attend a press conference on the school shooting in Uvalde.

Abbott will speak to the convention instead “through prerecorded video,” spokesman Mark Miner told the Dallas Morning News Thursday.

The NRA event takes place in Houston, more than 250 miles away from Uvalde. Several scheduled speakers and performers have bowed out since Tuesday’s deadly school shooting.

Abbott is now scheduled to be at a 3:30 p.m. CT news conference on the school shooting Friday, which his office says will come after “a briefing with state agencies, local officials, and members of the community.”

Layla Salazar, 11, has been identified as one of the victims in Tuesday’s shooting, her family confirmed to CNN’s Gary Tuchman.

Her father, Vincent Salazar III, and her mother, Melinda Alejandro Salazar, said Layla was an active child who loved to run, film TikTok videos and dance. Her grandfather,

“Our hearts are shattered because of this,” her grandfather Vincent Salazar Jr. said.

Her family also told CNN that Layla loved to swim in the river with her two big brothers.

As a parent, it can be gut-wrenching to discuss violence happening across the country with your kids, and even harder when the violence is happening in our schools. In the wake of the Texas school shooting, what questions are your school-aged children asking and how are they feeling?

Please call in with your child and leave us a voicemail at (404) 618-1992 to let us know your thoughts and what you are discussing with your children.

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Thank you for weighing in with your important perspective.

Questions remain over the police response to Tuesday’s deadly mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas as investigators are “still grabbing a lot of information” about what happened, according to one official.

“We’re going to find out. With all the different agencies that are involved, we’re working every angle that’s available. We won’t stop until we get all the answers that we possibly can,” Victor Escalon, South Texas regional director for the Department of Public Safety, told reporters Thursday.

Here are the latest developments:

Read more about what we know — and don’t know — about the shooting here.

Since Tuesday’s mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the details about what happened have changed and been updated by authorities.

Victor Escalon, South Texas regional director for the Department of Public Safety, told reporters Thursday that investigators are “still grabbing a lot of information” regarding the shooting.

“We’re going to find out. With all the different agencies that are involved, we’re working every angle that’s available. We won’t stop until we get all the answers that we possibly can,” he said during a news conference.

Here is the latest timeline of events that police claim occurred:

Thursday’s news conference underscored the confusion and disorganization of the police response and failed to answer questions as to how the gunman was able to remain inside the classroom for such a long time.

CNN reported Thursday that the Uvalde school district, where the shooting occurred, had a safety plan that included its own police force, social media monitoring and a threat-reporting system to “provide a safe and secure environment” for students. 

The two-page document on the district’s website lists 21 different measures that it says it has undertaken for the safety of the school community, ranging from an app for reporting bullying to physical security measures, like fencing and a buzz-in door system. It’s not clear to what degree the plan was developed with active shooters in mind.

Officials defend response:

CNN’s Eric Levenson, Holly Yan, Joe Sutton, Clare Foran and Ted Barrett contributed reporting to this post.

Authorities and families of the victims continue to identify the 19 students and 2 teachers killed in Tuesday’s shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

CNN’s Eric Levenson, Holly Yan, Joe Sutton, Clare Foran and Ted Barrett contributed reporting to this post.

As lawmakers are under intense pressure to take action in the wake of multiple recent episodes of horrific gun violence, Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a bill designed to combat domestic terrorism from advancing in a key vote.

The bill passed the Democratic-controlled House last week following a tragic mass shooting at a supermarket in a predominately Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. But Republicans have pushed back against the measure put forward by Democrats, describing it as partisan and unnecessary. At least 10 Senate Republicans would have needed to vote with Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold imposed by the filibuster.

The failure of the domestic terrorism bill in the Senate underscores yet again how challenging it is for lawmakers to enact any kind of major policy change in the wake of mass shootings amid a highly polarized political environment and widespread GOP opposition to stricter gun controls.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for the Senate to take up the House-passed bill, but acknowledged ahead of the vote that it was unlikely to advance amid GOP opposition. He indicated Democrats are willing to give some time and space for efforts to reach some kind of bipartisan compromise on gun legislation though he noted the odds are long. He also made clear that these efforts will not be given an unlimited amount of time to play out, and that if they fail the Senate will move forward with votes on gun safety legislation.

On the Republican side, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN he met this morning with GOP Texas Sen. John Cornyn after Cornyn returned from Texas, and encouraged the senator to begin discussions with Democrats to see if they can find a middle ground on some legislation to respond to the shooting in Texas.

CNN’s Eric Levenson, Holly Yan, Joe Sutton, Clare Foran and Ted Barrett contributed reporting to this post.