UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Frustrated onlookers urged police to charge into the Texas elementary school where a gunman’s rampage killed 19 children and two teachersWitnesses said Wednesday as investigators worked to follow up on the massacre that lasted more than 40 minutes and ended when the 18-year-old gunman was killed by a Border Patrol team.

” Go for it ! Go for it ! nearby women shouted at officers shortly after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24, who saw the scene from outside his home, across from Robb Elementary School in the very town United of Uvalde. Carranza said officers did not enter.

Javier Cazares, whose fourth grade daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was killed in the attack, said he rushed to school when he heard about the shooting.arriving while the police were still gathered in front of the building.

Upset that the police wouldn’t move in, he raised the idea of ​​charging into the school with several other passers-by.

“Let’s go fast because the cops aren’t doing anything like they’re supposed to,” he said. “More could have been done.”

“They weren’t prepared,” he added.

Minutes earlier, Carranza had seen Salvador Ramos crash his truck into a ditch outside the school, grab his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and shoot two people outside a funeral home. neighbor who escapes unscathed.

Officials say he ‘met’ a school district security guard outside the school, although there have been conflicting reports from authorities as to whether the men exchanged gunfire . After running inside, he shot two police officers arriving from Uvalde who were outside the building, Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Travis Considine said. The police were injured.

After entering the school, Ramos charged into a classroom and began killing.

He “barricaded himself by locking the door and just started shooting the kids and the teachers who were inside that classroom,” Department of Public Safety Lt. Christopher Olivarez told CNN. . “It just shows you the utter evil of the shooter.”

All those who were killed were in the same classroom, he said.

Public Safety Department director Steve McCraw told reporters that 40 minutes to an hour passed between the time Ramos opened fire on the school security guard and the time the tactical team shot him, although a department spokesperson later said they could not give a solid estimate of how long the shooter was in school or when he was killed .

“The bottom line is that law enforcement was there,” McCraw said. “They engaged immediately. They contained (Ramos) in the classroom.

Meanwhile, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation said Border Patrol agents had difficulty opening the classroom door and had to ask a staff member to open the room with a key. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation.

Carranza said the officers should have entered the school earlier.

“There were more. There was only one,” he said.

Uvalde is a predominantly Latino town of some 16,000 people about 120 kilometers from the Mexican border. Robb Elementary, with nearly 600 students in second, third, and fourth grades, is a one-story brick structure in a mostly residential neighborhood of modest homes.

Hundreds of people crammed into bleachers at the city’s fairgrounds for a vigil on Wednesday and the crowd swelled so much that some stood around the loudspeakers on the dirt arena. Some cried. Some closed their eyes while mouthing silent prayers. Parents wrapped their arms around their children, while speakers led prayers for healing.

Before attacking the school, Ramos shot and injured his grandmother in the house they shared, authorities said.

Neighbor Gilbert Gallegos, 82, who lives across the street and has known the family for decades, said he was wading through his yard when he heard the gunshots.

Ramos ran out the front door and across the small yard to the truck parked in front of the house. He seemed panicked, Gallegos said, and was struggling to get the truck out of park.

Then he ran away: “He spun, I mean fast”, spraying gravel in the air.

His grandmother came out covered in blood: “She said, ‘Berto, that’s what he did. He shot me.’ She was hospitalized.

Gallegos, whose wife called 911, said he didn’t hear any arguments before or after the shots were fired and didn’t know of any history of bullying or abusing Ramos, whom he saw rarely.

Investigators also shed no light on the motive for the attack on Ramos, which also left at least 17 people injured. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Ramos, a resident of the small town about 85 miles (135 kilometers) west of San Antonio, had no known criminal or mental health history.

“We don’t see a pattern or catalyst at this time,” McCraw of the Department of Public Safety said.

Ramos legally purchased the rifle and a second similar one last week, just after his birthday, authorities said.

About half an hour before the mass shooting, Ramos sent the first of three online messages warning of his plans, Abbott said.

Ramos wrote that he was going to shoot his grandmother, then he shot the woman. In the final note, sent about 15 minutes before reaching Robb Elementary, he said he was going to shoot an elementary school, according to Abbott. Investigators said Ramos did not specify which school.

Ramos sent the private text messages through Facebook, company spokesman Andy Stone said. It was unclear who received the messages.

Grief engulfed Uvalde as the details emerged.

Among the dead were Eliahna Garcia, an outgoing 10-year-old who loved to sing, dance and play basketball; fellow fourth grader Xavier Javier Lopez, who was looking forward to a summer of swimming; and a teacher, Eva Mireles, whose husband is an officer with the school district police department.

“You can just tell by their angelic smiles that they were loved,” Uvalde Schools Superintendent Hal Harrell said, fighting back tears as he remembered the children and teachers killed.

The tragedy was the latest in a seemingly endless wave of mass shootings across the United States in recent years. Just 10 days earlier, 10 black people were shot dead in a racist attack in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

The attack was the deadliest school shooting in the United States since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.

Amid calls for tougher gun restrictions, the Republican governor has repeatedly spoken out about mental health issues among Texas youth and argued that tougher gun laws in Chicago, New York and California are ineffective.

Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is running against Abbott for governor, cut short Wednesday’s press conference, calling the tragedy “predictable.” Pointing his finger at Abbott, he said: “It’s up to you until you choose to do something different. It will continue to happen. O’Rourke was escorted away as some in the room shouted at him. Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin shouted that O’Rourke was a “sick son of a bitch”.

Texas has some of the most gun-friendly laws in the country and has been the scene of some of the deadliest shootings in the United States over the past five years.

“I just don’t know how people can sell this type of weapon to an 18-year-old child,” said Siria Arizmendi, victim Eliahna Garcia’s aunt, angrily through tears. “What is he going to use it for if not for this purpose?”

President Joe Biden said Wednesday that “the Second Amendment is not absolute” as he called for new gun limitations in the wake of the massacre.

But the prospects for reforming national gun regulations looked bleak. Repeated attempts over the years to expand background checks and enact other restrictions have been met with Republican opposition in Congress.

The shooting took place days before the start of the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Houston, with the governor of Texas and the state’s two Republican U.S. senators scheduled to speak.

Dillon Silva, whose nephew was in a classroom, said students were watching the Disney movie “Moana” when they heard several loud noises and a bullet shattered a window. Moments later, their teacher saw the assailant pass by.

“Oh, my God, he has a gun! the professor shouted twice, according to Silva. “The teacher didn’t even have time to lock the door,” he said.

The tight-knit community, built around a shaded central plaza, includes many families who have lived there for generations.

Lorena Auguste was a substitute teacher at Uvalde High School when she heard about the shooting and began frantically texting her niece, a fourth-grader at Robb Elementary. Eventually, she found out that the girl was fine.

But that night, her niece had a question.

“Why did they do this to us?” asked the girl. “We are good kids. We haven’t done anything wrong.

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Bleiberg reported from Dallas. Acacia Coronado, Eugene Garcia and Dario Lopez-Mills in Uvalde; Ben Fox, Michael Balsamo, Amanda Seitz and Eric Tucker in Washington; Paul J. Weber in Austin; Juan Lozano in Houston; Gene Johnson in Seattle; Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

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