MASS SHOOTINGS

Speaking out for the first time, an El Paso mom recounts the moments from a bank inside the Walmart where 23 people were fatally shot and dozens more were injured in 2019.

The parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis are suing Jones for falsely claiming that the 2012 mass school shooting was a hoax meant to take away Americans’ guns. The trial is the first of three to determine monetary penalties against the Texas-based conspiracy theorist for his lies about the tragedy.

Free Speech Systems submitted the filing during a two-week trial to determine how much the Texas-based conspiracy theorist will award the parents of a victim in the 2012 school shooting, prompting speculation about the company’s effort to avoid bankruptcy oversight as a small business.

In a letter to the Texas House committee investigating the state’s deadliest school shooting, Robb Elementary principal Mandy Gutierrez says school leaders weren’t complacent about security.

The gunman who killed 19 elementary students and two teachers bought the assault rifle he used after turning 18 just days before the massacre.

The House committee investigating the Uvalde school shooting said it intended to publish the report in both languages but was unable to get it translated before a meeting last Sunday when the English version was released.

The new material further illustrates the lack of coordination among officers, the confusion over the chain of command and the delays in confronting the shooter.

For about three hours, people demanded the resignation of the school district superintendent and threatened to keep their children out of school until campus security is improved.

The department’s officers made up nearly one-fourth of the 376 law enforcement members who responded to Texas’ deadliest school shooting. Announcement of the inquiry came one day after a report criticized police response to the massacre.

Uvalde residents who lost loved ones at Robb Elementary say they want to know if officers will face repercussions.

Lt. Mariano Pargas was the acting city police chief the day of the shooting. Mayor Don McLaughlin said the city is investigating Pargas’ role in the delayed confrontation of the shooter.

Among the findings: Police lacked clear leadership and basic communications, school doors were routinely left open and the gunman gave hints of his coming rampage.

Identified as at-risk, he never received special education services and ultimately flunked out, according to a Texas House committee report.

Residents and victims’ families say the way local and state leaders are handling details about the state’s deadliest shooting is compounding their trauma and grief.

One session on school shootings at the American School Counselor Association’s annual conference in Austin this week drew a large crowd. It discussed the roles counselors play before and after such traumatic events.

Mayor Don McLaughlin denied a recent report that said a Uvalde officer passed up a chance to shoot the gunman at Robb Elementary. The officer never saw the gunman, he said.

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez and Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin are asking Gov. Greg Abbott to remove the Uvalde County district attorney from overseeing the Uvalde Together Resiliency Center.

Texas School Safety Center officials said they will alert districts and local law enforcement of the audits, where trained staff will try to find access points into school buildings. But school campuses will not be informed ahead of time.

Jazmin Cazares, 17, was one of several family members of shooting victims and experts testifying before Texas lawmakers on Thursday. Her sister, Jackie Cazares, 9, was one of the victims of the school shooting in Uvalde.

The move comes weeks after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary. Uvalde CISD police Chief Pete Arredondo, one of the first to respond, and state officials have provided differing stories about what happened inside the school.

Relatives of the victims and other members of the community also called for the ousting of Pete Arredondo, who is the police chief of the city’s school district and a newly elected council member.

New information released by law enforcement sources and the director of the Department of Public Safety tells a different story about police response to the shooting than Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo.

McCraw testified before a Texas Senate committee, laying blame on local police officers in Uvalde for not acting faster to save children in school shooting.

The unremitting pace of ritualized mourning ended Thursday as the town buried an 11-year-old victim of the Robb Elementary shooting. Survivors now face less structured grief, starting each day knowing they will live it out differently than they should have.

Officials have called for more armed officers on campuses in the wake of the Uvalde shooting. Experts and some parents, though, say more law enforcement on campus doesn’t necessarily make schools safer.

Criticized by law enforcement experts for slowness in taking out the shooter, Pete Arredondo described an agonizing wait for a key that would work. In an interview with The Texas Tribune, he said he hadn’t spoken out sooner because he didn’t want to compound his hometown’s grief or point blame.

In a bulletin, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said that recent and upcoming events could be “exploited to justify acts of violence against a range of possible targets.”

Authorities have been criticized for waiting over an hour to enter the school and confront the shooter. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said law enforcement agencies have promised to cooperate with the federal inquiry.

Cornyn on Monday made clear in a Senate floor speech that there are limits to what he and the Senate GOP conference are willing to support in their efforts to pass bipartisan gun legislation.

In arguing over causes of the latest mass shooting, political debate often overlooks the range of incremental steps that could lessen the chances of mass killing and help address the nation’s persistent gun violence.

More than 250 self-declared gun enthusiasts, including donors who have contributed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaigns, have signed on to an open letter supporting Sen. John Cornyn’s efforts at bipartisan gun reform legislation.

Patrick said he wants police in as many Texas schools as possible to have bulletproof shields before the fall. He’s asked other state leaders to move around money in the state budget to make it happen.

The revelation is the latest to point to deficiencies and missteps in authorities’ response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School. Police opted to wait for reinforcements and tactical gear, taking more than an hour to confront and take down the shooter.

Through music and painting, artists have begun works to preserve the lives lost in the Robb Elementary School shooting. “We want them to be monumental,” one artist said. “Because those lives should’ve been monumental.”

As chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department, it was Arredondo’s call to wait more than an hour for backup instead of ordering officers on scene to immediately charge the shooter.

Phelan said it is an “outrage” that officials still do not have a clear picture of what happened during the shooting. The committee’s findings will inform the House’s legislative response.

Uvalde offers mental health resources for the victims and considers rebuilding the school where the shooting took place as the community tends to its invisible wounds.

Gutierrez, a Democrat who has been critical of the state’s response to past shootings, said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also snubbed state senators whose districts were affected by shootings in El Paso and Santa Fe.

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, said the commanding officer at the scene of the shooting was not informed about the calls that Uvalde police were receiving, calling the lack of coordination a “system failure.”

They were high school sweethearts. Irma Garcia taught at Robb Elementary for her entire 23-year career. Her husband died of a heart attack days after she was shot.

Abbott has tasked the Texas School Safety Center with conducting in-person, unannounced audits of public schools to see how quickly staff can enter a building without being stopped and detect weak points.

The committees are different from a special legislative session, which Democrats — and at least a couple Republicans — have asked for after the shooting. Abbott has not ruled that out.

Longtime Uvalde residents say the city is a hunting mecca and the love for guns goes right along with it. But some would now support measures like raising the age limit to buy AR-style weapons or monitoring high-volume ammunition purchases.

She wanted to be an art teacher. Her favorite color was purple. She was laid to rest three weeks after her birthday.

Residents of Uvalde, a deeply religious community, prayed, cried and embraced each other on the first Sunday since a gunman killed 21 people at an elementary school.

Residents of this town, which is nicknamed “the Crossroads of America,” grapple with the horror of losing 21 lives.

Facing yet another community grieving after a mass shooting, the president replied, ‘We will.’ But Congress hasn’t managed to change gun policy for decades.

The “God-given right” to self-defense has become a rallying cry in Texas politics, further cementing gun ownership as a holy cause and political identity. The state’s Republican leadership has spent decades carrying the banner.

All 13 Senate Democrats demanded lawmakers pass legislation that raises the minimum age to purchase a firearm and requires universal background checks, among other measures.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and other Republicans argue that gunmen can be stopped by locking all but one door and posting guards at schools. School officials and safety experts say that’s not realistic.

Now, let’s see how this works: 231 mass shootings in 146 days of 2021. And yet the Republican Party is pushing hard to make it easier to purchase guns.