Source: Jordan Vonderhaar / Getty
On May 24, the United States was rocked by another devastating mass shooting after an 18-year-old gunman opened fire on an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Armed with two assault rifles, the shooter barged into Robb Elementary School on Tuesday and killed at least 19 children and 2 adults, just before he was fatally shot by law enforcement.
Manny Renfro told AP News that his 8-year-old grandson was among the victims killed in the senseless shooting.
“The sweetest little boy that I’ve ever known,” said Renfro, before he recalled a memory from when he had last visited his grandson.
“We started throwing the football together and I was teaching him pass patterns. Such a fast little boy and he could catch a ball so good,” Renfro added. “There were certain plays that I would call that he would remember and he would do it exactly like we practiced.”
Eva Mireles, a beloved Fourth-grade teacher at Robb Elementary, was also shot and killed during the chaotic incident.
“She was a beautiful person & dedicated teacher…There are no words,” one parent, whose daughter worked closely with Mireles wrote on Twitter, the New York Post noted.
Mireles had been an educator with the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District for nearly 17 years, according to the school’s website.
Texas officials have since identified the deceased gunman as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos. A source somewhat “close” to the suspect claimed that Ramos sent him photos of “a bag full of ammunition days before the attack.”
“He would message me here and there, and four days ago he sent me a picture of the AR he was using … and a backpack full of 5.56 rounds, probably like seven mags,” the associate, who wanted to remain annoymous said, CNN reported.
“I was like, ‘bro, why do you have this?’ and he was like, ‘Don’t worry about it.'” “He proceeded to text me, ‘I look very different now. You wouldn’t recognize me.'”
The source claimed that the gunman was “taunted” by classmates because of the clothes he wore and his family’s financial situation.
“He would not go to school … and he just, like, slowly dropped out,” the confidante added. “He barely came to school.”
Tuesday’s shooting stirs up chilling similarities to the vicious shooting that occurred in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The massacre claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.
The travesty also comes just weeks after the Buffalo mass shooting, where a gunman shot and killed 10 people at a community supermarket. Now, officials are pleading with the government to place tighter restrictions on gun laws across the nation.
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