Highlights
- As many as 18 children were killed after a gunman opened fire at a Texas elementary school on May 24
- A 18-year-old gunman was also reported killed following the attack
- Authorities said the gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde with a handgun
Texas school shooting news: There have been dozens of shootings and other attacks in United States schools and colleges over the years, but until the massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999, the number of dead tended to be in the single digits. Since then, the number of shootings that included schools and killed 10 or more people has mounted. The most recent two were both in Texas.
Know more about such tragic incidents:
ROBB ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, May 2022:
An 18-year-old gunman opened fire Tuesday at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two adults, officials said. The 18-year-old attacker was killed by law enforcement.
UVALDE SCHOOL SHOOTING
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SANTA FE HIGH SCHOOL, May 2018:
A 17-year-old armed with a shotgun and a pistol opened fire at a Houston-area high school Friday, killing 10 people, most of them students, authorities said. It was the nation’s deadliest such attack since the massacre in Florida that gave rise to a campaign by teens for gun control.
The suspected shooter, who was in custody on murder charges, also had explosive devices that were found in the school and nearby, said Gov. Greg Abbott, who called the assault “one of the most heinous attacks that we’ve ever seen in the history of Texas schools.”
Investigators offered no immediate motive for the shooting. The governor said the assailant intended to kill himself but gave up and told police that he did not have the courage to take his own life.
MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL, February 2018:
An attack left 14 students and three staff members dead at the school in Parkland, Florida, and injured many others. The 20-year-old suspect was charged with murder.
UMPQUA COMMUNITY COLLEGE, October 13, 2015:
Hundreds of people lined the road leading to the Oregon community college where a gunman killed nine people, holding signs reading “UCC Strong” as students returned Monday to the scene of the deadliest shooting in state history.
The Umpqua Community College campus in the small town of Roseburg reopened last week, but students are heading back to class for the first time since the Oct. 1 shooting, which also wounded nine people.
Residents waving American flags and signs greeted students driving into campus. Volunteers and dogs came to offer comfort, and tissues were available in every classroom. State troopers and sheriff’s deputies patrolled the grounds.
SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, December 2012:
A 19-year-old man killed his mother at their home in Newtown, Connecticut, then went to the nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 20 first graders and six educators. He took his own life.
The 2012 shooting was the deadliest attack at an elementary school in the US. Twenty of the 26 victims were between the ages of five and six.
The shooter was later identified as Adam Lanza. According to a November 2013 report, issued by the Connecticut State Attorney’s office, Lanza acted alone and planned his actions. However, it provided no indication of why he carried out the killings or targeted the school.
VIRGINIA TECH, April 2007:
A 23-year-old student killed 32 people on the campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, in April 2007; more than two dozen others were wounded. The gunman then killed himself.
Kevin Sterne has spent 10 years trying not to let himself be defined by the mass shooting that nearly killed him at Virginia Tech. But now that he’s a new father, Sterne grapples with knowing that one day he must tell his son about the horror he worked so hard to put behind him.
“How do I approach that? Do I talk about it? What age is appropriate to go into what kind of detail?” Sterne asked, seated outside the building where he was taking a German class on April 16, 2007, when a mentally ill student with a gun chained the doors shut and killed 30 people before killing himself.
Not until months after the shootings did Sterne’s mother hear him talk about what he saw that day. Even now, he doesn’t discuss it much: the day a bullet cut through his right leg and another one ripped his femoral artery. The day he wrapped a power cord around his leg as a tourniquet, likely saving his own life. The day four officers carried his bloody body out of Norris Hall — an image plastered on the front pages of newspapers across the country.
RED LAKE HIGH SCHOOL, March 27, 2005:
A 16-year-old student killed his grandfather and the man’s companion at their Minnesota home, then went to nearby Red Lake High School, where he killed five students, a teacher and a security guard before shooting himself.
With the bang of a drum and a high-pitched wail, the first funerals began on Saturday for victims of the shootings on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in which 10 people died.
A lone man’s sad cry gave way to songs and more drumming from a circle of a dozen men and soon hundreds of people who had gathered in the community center began filing past a pair of open caskets.
Daryl Lussier, 58, a tribal police officer, and his longtime companion Michelle Sigana, 31, were the first victims in Monday’s attack by his grandson, Jeff Weise, 16.
COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL, April 1999:
Two students killed 12 of their peers and one teacher at the school in Littleton, Colorado, and injured many others before killing themselves.
On April 20, 1999, two teenage boys dressed in black trench coats went on a killing rampage at Columbine High School in suburban Denver. They shot and killed 12 classmates and a teacher and wounded two dozen others before taking their own lives.
Twenty years later, The Associated Press is republishing this story about the attack, the product of reporting from more than a dozen AP journalists who conducted interviews in the hours after it happened. The article first appeared on April 22, 1999.
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(With AP inputs)