Uvalde School Shooting

May 24, 2022, began as a day of celebration at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Students and parents had gathered at the school that morning for an awards ceremony and end-of-school-year celebration. Hours after certificates were awarded and photographs taken, a teenager armed with an AR-15-style rifle stormed the school and began a siege that would last for more than an hour. During that time, even as trapped fourth graders dialed 911, hundreds of law enforcement officers failed to confront the gunman, a failure that subsequent investigations revealed cost lives. Some 78 minutes after the shooting started, U.S. Border Patrol agents shot and killed the shooter. By then 19 students and two teachers were dead in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

The shooting

About 11:30 am on May 24, 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos entered Robb Elementary through a back door that was unlocked. He had driven there from the home he shared with his grandmother, whom he had just shot in the face. He ultimately gained access to adjoining fourth-grade classrooms where three teachers and 33 students were watching a movie. Within minutes of Ramos entering the school, several Uvalde police officers had entered the building; two were grazed by bullets from the gunman. In the opening moments of the massacre, Ramos fired more than 100 shots.

As news of the shooting spread, additional law enforcement officers arrived on the scene, as did scores of anxious parents. Even with almost 400 officers on site, the Uvalde schools police chief, Pete Arredondo, who said he believed the shooter had barricaded himself in a room and was no longer actively killing people, ordered his officers to wait to act until specially equipped agents arrived.

From inside the fourth-grade classrooms, calls to 911 began. One girl called repeatedly, telling the operator what room she was in, reporting that people were dead in her classroom, and asking for the police to come. Fourth-grade teacher Eva Mireles called her husband, a police officer, to report that she had been shot. When he entered the building, telling his fellow officers that his wife was bleeding and that he was trying to get to her, he was escorted from the school. Some parents attempted to enter the school themselves. Some officers in the building appeared to try to enter the classrooms but were told by others to stand down. Arnulfo Reyes, a fourth-grade teacher who was shot multiple times but survived, recounted that students could hear officers on the other side of the door. He told ABC News:

One of the students from the next-door classroom was saying ‘Officer, we’re in here, we’re in here.’ But they had already left.

Of the 19 students killed, 11 were in Reyes’s classroom. At 12:50 pm a small number of specially equipped Border Patrol officers took charge, stormed the adjoining classrooms, and killed Ramos.

The victims

A total of 21 people died as a result of the shooting. They are:

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• Nevaeh Bravo, 10
• Jackie Cazares, 9
• Makenna Lee Elrod, 10
• Jose Manuel Flores, Jr., 10
• Eliahna (Ellie) Amyah Garcia, 9
• Irma Garcia, 48
• Uziyah Garcia, 10
• Amerie Jo Garza, 10
• Xavier Lopez, 10
• Jayce Carmelo Luevanos, 10
• Tess Marie Mata, 10
• Maranda Mathis, 11
• Eva Mireles, 44
• Alithia Ramirez, 10
• Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10
• Maite Yuleana Rodriguez, 10
• Alexandria (Lexi) Aniyah Rubio, 10
• Layla Salazar, 11
• Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10
• Eliahna A. Torres, 10
• Rojelio Torres, 10

In addition to the 21 deaths, 17 people were injured in the attack.

The response

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the officers on the scene were heralded for bravery. But as days went by it became clear that officers who had been trained in what to do during an active shooter situation had failed to respond appropriately. It was eerily reminiscent of similar failures by law enforcement at the mass school shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

A scathing investigation of law enforcement actions by the Texas House of Representatives was released less than two months after the shooting. Among its findings were that “some victims could have survived” if not for the failure to act, which was described as an example of “egregiously poor decision making.” Arredondo was fired as the police chief of Uvalde schools and faces charges of endangering the lives of children. He is expected to stand trial in October 2025. Robb Elementary School was demolished; a new school named Legacy Elementary School, which will pay tribute to the victims, is scheduled to open in the fall of 2025.