AFP

The day after his 18th birthday, Salvador Ramos, a troubled teenager from small town Texas, bought his first assault rifle. A week later he walked into a local elementary school where he shot and killed 19 small children and two of their teachers.

Authorities are still trying to piece together what drove Ramos to commit America’s worst school massacre in a decade, but here is what is known so far about the shooting:

– How the shooter attacked –

Described as a long-bullied youth with a history of self-harm, Ramos turned 18 on May 16 — and bought a first rifle the very next day, followed three days later by a second and 375 rounds of ammunition.

At some point on Tuesday morning, Ramos shot his 66-year-old grandmother at her home, where he stayed at times. She was airlifted in critical condition to a hospital in nearby San Antonio.

From his grandmother’s home, Ramos drove his grey Ford pickup truck to the area of Robb Elementary School, where more than 500 students in grades two to four — aged around seven to 10 years old — had just three days of class left before summer vacation.

Ramos crashed his truck into a wide culvert behind the school, attracting the attention of people in the neighborhood.

Women working at a nearby funeral home told The Washington Post that when they approached Ramos to see if he needed assistance, he began shooting at them.

Clad in black and wearing a tactical vest, and carrying an assault rifle, he then ran to the school.

The shooting began around 11:30 am. 

Ramos managed to gain entry to a fourth-grade classroom, barricaded himself inside, and starting shooting at the children and teachers trapped inside.

The shooter displayed “no regard for human life,” according to Lt. Chris Olivarez, spokesperson for the Texas Department for Public Safety. “Just a complete tragedy, an evil person.”

All of the victims were killed in the same classroom.

Their identities have been gradually revealed as shattered families share their pain online: from Xavier Lopez, a 10-year-old boy who loved to dance, to Ellie Garcia, “the happiest ever” in her father’s words, and Amerie Jo Garza, a young girl with a brilliant smile who had just celebrated her 10th birthday.

– How he was stopped –

As a crowd grew nearby, police arrived on the scene in response to a report of a crashed vehicle, according to Olivarez.

Hearing shots coming from the school, they ran inside and themselves came under gunfire. Two officers were wounded.

Some police on the scene started to break windows and evacuate children and teachers from the premises.

More law enforcement descended on the scene, including US Border Patrol Agents, who have a station office in the city.

“Upon entering the building, agents and other law enforcement officers faced gunfire from the subject, who was barricaded inside,” said Department of Homeland Affairs spokesperson Marsha Espinosa. 

Espinosa said law enforcement officers “put themselves between the shooter and children on the scene to draw the shooter’s attention away from potential victims,” said Espinosa.

It was more than 30 minutes after Ramos entered the school that he was finally shot and killed, reportedly by one of the Border Patrol agents.

A tight-knit Latino community in Texas was wracked with grief Wednesday after a teenager wearing body armor marched into an elementary school and killed 19 children and two teachers — the latest spasm of America’s gun violence crisis.

Details of the atrocity, the victims and the 18-year-old gunman — 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 mainly Hispanic town 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.” 

Grief-stricken and angry, President Joe Biden addressed the nation in the hours after the attack, calling 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 blocked off the area around the school on Wednesday and there was little traffic or pedestrian movement. The neighborhood is one of modest single-story homes, with small yards and often a swing set and an outdoor grill for barbecues.

Identified as Salvador Ramos, the gunman was a resident of the town and a US citizen.

According to Texan officials, Ramos shot his grandmother before heading to Robb Elementary School around noon where he abandoned his vehicle and entered with a rifle.

Law enforcement officers at the school engaged Ramos with gunfire but he managed to get into a classroom and lock it to barricade himself, then started shooting kids and the two teachers, said Chris Olivarez of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

All the fatalities occurred in the one classroom, until police managed to shoot and killed Ramos.

“Just goes to show you complete evil from this shooter,” Olivarez told CNN.

– Gunman’s troubled past –

Details have emerged of the gunman 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. 

Days after he turned 18 this month, Ramos legally purchased two assault rifles and 375 rounds of ammunition, CNN said, quoting Texas state Senator John Whitmore.

As shattered families shared the news on social media, the names of the murdered children, most of them of Latino heritage, began coming out: they included 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.

“I love you Amerie jo,” he wrote. “I will never be happy or complete again.”

More than a dozen children were also wounded in the attack at the school, attended by more than 500 students aged around seven to 10 years old, most of them economically disadvantaged.

– ‘Going to be missed’ –

Fourth-grade teacher Eva Mireles was shot and killed while trying to protect her students, her aunt Lydia Martinez Delgado told the New York Times. She said Mireles was proud of teaching kids of Latino heritage.

A cousin of Mireles, Amber Ybarra, called her a hero.

“Her cooking was amazing. Her laughter was contagious, and she’s going to be missed,” Ybarra told NBC’s “Today” show. “She put her heart into everything that she did.”

There have been more mass shootings — in which four or more people were wounded or killed — in 2022 than days so far this year, according to the non-profit Gun Violence Archive which recorded 213 such incidents.

The Uvalde shooting was the deadliest such incident since the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut, in which 20 elementary school children and six staff were killed.

– ‘Happens nowhere else’ –

Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook shooting took place, made an impassioned appeal for concrete action to prevent further violence.

“This isn’t inevitable, these kids weren’t unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else,” Murphy said on the Senate floor in Washington.

The deadly assault in Texas follows a series of deadly mass shootings in the United States this month: most recently on May 14 when an 18-year-old self-declared white supremacist shot 10 people dead at a grovery store in Buffalo, New York.

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.

A young boy who loved to dance, a girl who was “the happiest ever” — here’s a closer look at four of the victims of the mass shooting at a Texas elementary school that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers.

– Amerie Jo Garza, the big sister –

Amerie Jo Garza, a young girl with a brilliant smile, had just celebrated her 10th birthday in mid-May.

For unbearably long hours on Tuesday, her father Angel Garza had no news of her.

“I don’t ask for much or hardly even post on here but please it’s been 7 hours and I still haven’t heard anything on my love,” he wrote on Facebook, along with a photo of him hugging his grinning daughter.

Several hours later, he posted again.

“Thank you everyone for the prayers and help trying to find my baby,” he said. “My little love is now flying high with the angels above.”

“I love you Amerie Jo. Watch over your baby brother for me.”

– Ellie Garcia, ‘a doll’ –

“Our Ellie was a doll and was the happiest ever,” Ellie Garcia’s father, Steven Garcia, wrote on Facebook. “I was gonna DJ for her at her party like she wanted me too!!!”

“Mom and Dad love you never forget that and please try and stay by our side,” he added.

Ellie’s mother Jennifer Lugo also posted many photos of her daughter on social media. “My heart is broken,” she wrote alongside a photo of Ellie at her first communion in 2021, dressed in white and beaming at the camera.

“I feel so numb. I miss you baby!!!!!”

– Eva Mireles, teacher –

Eva Mireles was one of two teachers killed Tuesday by the 18-year-old gunman. In her early forties, she had been teaching for 17 years.

She loved running and hiking, according to a short biography of her posted on the school website.

“And now you just might see me riding a bike!!” she added.

Mireles is survived by her husband, a daughter and three pets.

– Xavier Lopez, the dancer –

Xavier Lopez, 10, “loved to dance,” his uncle Benito Martinez told Fox News Tuesday night.

“Oh man, he would dance even when he sweated but he didn’t care,” Martinez said of his young, dark-haired nephew.

“This past Sunday he was at my daughter’s birthday party,” Martinez said, smiling at the memory. “He was dancing.”

The US pointman on Iran warned Wednesday it was more likely than not that talks would fail to revive a nuclear deal as he vowed no let-up in pressure if Tehran clings to its demands.

Rob Malley, who has led more than a year of indirect talks with Iran in Vienna, nonetheless told lawmakers that President Joe Biden’s administration still supported the 2015 nuclear accord and was ready to lift sanctions if it secures an agreement.

“As of today the odds of a successful negotiation are lower than the odds of failure and that is because of excessive Iranian demands to which we will not succumb,” Malley told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He said the United States would reject “demands that go beyond the scope of the JCPOA,” using the official name for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

“We are fully prepared to live with and confront that reality if that is Iran’s choice,” Malley said.

He was likely referring to the clerical state’s demands to remove a terrorism blacklisting of the elite Revolutionary Guards, a step rejected by Biden and bitterly opposed by many in Congress.

But Malley made clear that Biden did not support military action — an option loudly mulled by Israel, which is suspected in a shadowy campaign of assassination against Iranian nuclear scientists.

“All options are on the table,” Malley said, while adding that military action would only “set back” Iran’s nuclear program.

Referring to the US history of war in the Middle East, Malley said, “We know that it costs.”

“But let’s leave it at this — the only solution here is a diplomatic one.”

– More economic pressure –

Malley, however, warned of greater economic pressure if talks fail — and said the United States would have the support of the Europeans, unlike under former president Donald Trump.

The Treasury Department said Wednesday it was imposing sanctions on a network backed by Revolutionary Guard and Russian officials that has shipped hundreds of millions of dollars of oil in defiance of unilateral US sanctions.

The JCPOA — brokered under then president Barack Obama with the blessing of European powers, Russia and China — promised economic relief for Iran which, inspectors said, had been complying with the accord’s severe curbs on its nuclear program.

Trump withdrew in 2018 and imposed sweeping unilateral sanctions including on Iran’s oil, vowing to bring Tehran to its knees.

Malley said that Trump’s approach had demonstrably failed, with Iran stepping up nuclear work since the US pullout.

Senators including some from Biden’s Democratic Party voiced exasperation, noting that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had warned in January that only “a few weeks” were left before Iran had advanced to the point that the JCPOA was no longer beneficial.

“We continue to wait and hope. But hope is not a national security strategy,” said Senator Bob Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the committee.

Menendez said Iran had convinced the world “that the United States wants the JCPOA more than the Iranian regime does.”

Malley replied that technical assessments remain “that the nonproliferation benefits of the deal are worth the sanctions relief that we would provide.”

He also offered strong criticism of Iran’s crackdown on recent protests against austerity measures.

“I don’t think this is a strong regime that is basking in being able to circumvent sanctions,” Malley said.

“It is a regime under duress and that’s because of its own mismanagement and our sanctions.”

A mass shooting that left 19 schoolchildren and two teachers dead in the deeply pro-gun state of Texas on Tuesday increased pressure on US politicians to take action over the ubiquity of firearms — but also brought the grim expectation of little or no change.

It was the eighth mass shooting this year, according to the Everytown gun control group, and came 10 days after another 18-year-old murdered 10 African Americans at a supermarket in New York.

But nearly 10 years after a man slaughtered 20 children and six others in an attack on the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and four years after 17 were killed at a Florida high school, restrictions on gun purchases and ownership have not significantly changed.

“I had hoped, when I became president, I would not have to do this, again,” a distraught President Joe Biden said as he led national mourning, vowing to overcome the US gun lobby and find a way to tighten gun ownership laws.

“Another massacre… an elementary school. Beautiful, innocent, second, third, fourth graders,” he said. “I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage.”

But guns of all kinds, especially high-powered assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols are cheaper and more widely available than ever across the United States.

And the all-too-familiar arguments over guns, public safety and rights re-opened immediately on the news of Tuesday’s mass shooting.

– Gun massacres ‘politicized’? –

The debate is set to intensify going into the weekend when Houston, Texas hosts the annual convention of the country’s leading pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association.

Scheduled to speak at the convention is former president Donald Trump, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and other prominent Republicans.

Senator Chris Murphy, who represents Connecticut, made an emotional call on the Senate floor on Tuesday for lawmakers to take action.

“Nowhere else does that happen except here in the United States of America and it is a choice. It is our choice to let it continue,” he said.

But Cruz quickly pushed back, saying people will use the shooting to attack the right of people under the US Constitution’s 2nd Amendment to own guns.

“When there’s a crime of this kind, it almost immediately gets politicized,” Cruz said.

Attacking constitutional gun rights “is not effective in stopping these sort of crimes,” he added.

– More guns, more shootings –

Yet data shows the grim national cost of gun crime.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the number of gun deaths in the United States underwent a “historic” increase in 2020.

And the US racked up 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent over 2019, and 24,245 gun suicides, up 1.5 percent.

At 6.1 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020, the firearm homicide rate was the highest in a quarter century. 

Mass shootings have also risen, according to Everytown.

“Since 2009, there have been 274 mass shootings in the United States, resulting in 1,536 people shot and killed and 983 people shot and wounded,” the group says.

The country is swamped with guns. US firearms makers produced more than 139 million guns for the commercial market over the two decades from 2000, and the country imported another 71 million.

That includes high-powered assault rifles, which can be found for $500, and 9 millimeter pistols that combine ease of use, high accuracy and semi-automatic triggers with prices as low as $200.

– Gun laws eased in Texas –

But at every incident, proposals by state and federal lawmakers to tighten laws are rebuffed by conservative colleagues, who count on voter support from a sizeable portion of the public opposed to gun control.

Last year, a Pew poll said just 53 percent of Americans want stricter gun laws, and only 49 percent think tougher laws would decrease mass shootings.

Politicians like Abbott have instead moved to ease controls. Last year, the Texas governor signed a law allowing anyone in the state over 21 to openly carry a handgun without a license or training, and, with certain qualifications, people over 18 can also do so.

Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand, an activist arm of Everytown, pointed out that Texas is one of the country’s largest gun markets and has a high firearms death rate.

“If more guns and fewer laws made Texas safer, it would be the safest state with declining rates of gun violence,” Watts wrote on Twitter.

“But it has high rates of gun suicide and homicide, and is home to four of the 10 deadliest mass shootings.”