May 25 Texas shooting news

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered an emotional speech on the Senate floor Wednesday following a mass shooting in a Texas school a day earlier.  

The top Senate Republican put the blame clearly on the shooter, whom he described as a “deranged young man” and “maniac,” echoing the views of many Republicans that mental illness is the root cause of many of these recurring tragedies.   

McConnell didn’t make any mention of the 18-year-old shooter’s easy access to high-powered weapons or any possible preventative legislative solutions.

In separate interviews with CNN, Florida GOP Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott pushed back on calls for AR-15s and semi-automatic weapons to be banned and dismissed demands for expanded background checks. Rubio instead said he would try to force a vote today on a measure to bolster school safety in other ways.

In a back-and-forth with CNN, Rubio contended that expanded background checks would not solve the problem and said even if Washington banned AR-15s, a killer would find a different weapon.

“Listen, at the end of day, you're arguing about what they're using to commit this, and the truth of matter is these people are going to commit these horrifying crimes whether they have to use another weapon to do it; they're going to figure out a way to do it,” Rubio said.

When asked about the prospect of banning AR-15s, Scott said, “I think we have in our Constitution our Second Amendment rights, and we shouldn’t take away rights for law-abiding citizens.”

As the justice of the peace for precinct 4 in Uvalde County, where the Robb Elementary School shooting occurred, it’s up to Lalo Diaz to coordinate the processing of the deceased victims. 

In total, 21 people — 19 children and two adults — were shot and killed Tuesday. The shooter also died. 

All 21 victims are currently with the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office in nearby San Antonio. The shooter is being held in a neighboring county and will not be moved to Bexar County until all the victims have been processed first, Diaz said. 

“Our first priority was to ID the victims,” Diaz said. 

Diaz was called to the scene a few hours after the shooting and was anticipating just a couple of victims. “I got there and thought it was 2-3 people and when I was told 16 children… You cannot believe it's happening in your community,” he said.  

“It's a small town,” Diaz said, adding that everyone knows each other. He himself knows the families of several victims. 

Diaz is working to get the bodies of the victims back to Uvalde as soon as possible. He is coordinating with the two funeral homes in Uvalde to get the victims back with their families as early as later today or tomorrow.

The 18-year-old Uvalde shooter messaged someone on Instagram that “I got a lil secret” just hours before he gunned down 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, according to a screenshot of messages posted on the social media site. 

Three days before the attack, an Instagram account linked to shooter Salvador Ramos posted a photo of two rifles lying on a carpet. The story tagged another Instagram account by name in the photo.

The owner of the tagged Instagram account wrote in a story posted after the shooting that Ramos had tagged her and messaged her out of the blue.   

The girl, who did not include her name on her account and has since made her account private, posted a series of screenshots of messages that she said she exchanged with the shooter in the days before the massacre.

“Be grateful I tagged you,” Ramos told her, the screenshots showed, and she replied: “i barely know you and u tag me in a picture with some guns.”

In another message that appeared to be sent the morning of the shooting, Ramos wrote “I’m about to” – but didn’t say what he would do. “I got a lil secret,” he wrote in another message. “I wanna tell u.”

In messages posted to her story before it went private, the girl said that she didn’t live in Texas and didn’t know Ramos.

“the only reason i responded to him was because i was afraid of him i wish i stayed awake to at least try to convince him to not commit his crime,” she wrote. “I didnt know.”

White House aides are in the early stages of planning for President Joe Biden to visit Texas after 19 children and two adults were killed in a mass shooting at an elementary school, sources familiar with the planning say. 

The details are still being finalized and it remains to be seen when the president will go, with officials keeping in mind they don't want to distract from ongoing response efforts. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that he “aches for the families” of the victims of the horrific elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. He indicated in his remarks there might not be a vote on the two House-passed background check bills any time soon, arguing Americans know where senators stand on gun safety legislation.

The two House-passed background check bills — if ever brought to a vote in the Senate — are expected to fail due to strong GOP opposition.

Schumer urged Republicans to “work with us” to reach a bipartisan deal on gun reform legislation – but acknowledged this is a very “slim prospect” and “we’ve been burnt so many times before.” 

He added that if they cannot reach a “strong bill that has bipartisan support,” which he again reiterated is “unlikely” -- Democrats will “continue to pursue this issue on our own. We have no choice. It's too important. Lives are at stake.”

Schumer pleaded with Republicans to support gun reform legislation. “Please, please, please, Damnit. Put yourself in the shoes of these parents, for once,” he said. “Maybe that thought putting yourself in the shoes of these parents instead of in the arms of the NRA might let you wriggle free from the vice like grip of the NRA. Might free you to act even on a simple measure…Please damnit please think if it was your child or grandchild.” 

Schumer also criticized Republicans for focusing on the motives of shooter, as well as concerns of mental illness versus gun reform. “They talk about the real villain being mental illness and say nothing of the fact that we are a nation suffocated by firearms,” he said. “The US is not an outlier on mental illness, but we are in outlier in the sheer number of guns available in this country. That is why we have so many shootings and other Western countries don't.”

He added that in the US “the leading cause of death among children is a firearm.” 

“America doesn't stand out when it comes to the rate of mental illness, but we are unique among the world's developed nations in that today the leading cause of death among children, is no longer a car accident, is no longer illness or malnourishment, the leading cause of death among children is a firearm.. Do you hear that my Republican colleagues? A firearm.”

Just two days before students were to begin summer break, a lone gunman entered a Texas elementary school and opened fire, killing 19 young children and two teachers in the deadliest school shooting in almost a decade. 

Here's the latest on Tuesday's school shooting at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas:

The victims:

What happened: 

The suspect 

The city & the school: 

Mass shootings in the US: 

The grandmother of the Uvalde shooting suspect is still alive, Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Lt. Chris Olivarez told CNN.

The suspect, Salvador Ramos, is believed to have shot his grandmother before going to Robb Elementary School. She was hospitalized in critical condition late Tuesday. 

"We're hoping, we're praying, that the grandmother does pull through because obviously, she is a key witness," Olivarez said.

He said authorities are trying to locate the suspect's grandfather.

Tom Nordwick, the CEO of Uvalde Memorial Hospital, told CNN that of the 15 patients they received Tuesday from the shooting at Robb Elementary School, all have been either discharged or transferred to other hospitals.

On Wednesday morning, Nordwick said that “no patients remain in house from the incident yesterday.”

In total, Uvalde Memorial Hospital received 15 patients, he said. Eleven of them were children, and four of those were transferred to other locations in San Antonio. Seven were discharged and sent home. Of the four adults received, one was transferred to a San Antonio hospital and three were discharged and sent home.

Nordwick said some of the patients received scatter or fragment wounds, though he couldn’t say what caused the wounds. Those who were injured more significantly had to be transferred to San Antonio hospitals.  

This morning, University Hospital San Antonio posted an update on its Facebook page providing an update on the four patients they have received from the Tuesday shooting:

All pediatric patients have their families with them, the hospital said in the post. 

Brooke Army Medical Center tweeted Tuesday that it received two patients in critical condition. On Wednesday, BAMC said the two patients from the Robb Elementary School shooting remain in serious condition.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the patients, families and the community of Uvalde,” BAMC said.

Jose Flores Jr., 10, has been identified as one of the victims killed at Robb Elementary, his father Jose Flores Sr. told CNN. 

Flores said his son was in the fourth grade and loved baseball and video games. 

“He was always full of energy,” Flores said. “Ready to play til the night.”

Flores also described his son as an amazing kid and big brother to his two siblings.