Uvalde Shooting

On May 24, 2022, an armed eighteen-year-old shot and killed nineteen children and two  teachers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, which marked the United States’ deadliest school  shooting in nearly a decade. Witnesses first identified the shooter at 11:30 a.m. outside the  school. The shooting began minutes later, when the shooter entered the building and went to a  connected pair of classrooms. Once officers learned of the situation, they surrounded the school  which kept the shooter trapped inside but also prevented parents from entering the building to  retrieve their children. After over an hour of waiting, border patrol officers stormed into the  building and killed the shooter. In the time it took for this response, the shooter killed nineteen  children and two teachers. The shooting’s location, high death count, and most importantly lack  of police response raised multiple questions about gun control and law enforcement. Three  separate investigations found that the officers involved, especially Chief Pete Arredondo,  demonstrated poor decision-making skills by delaying the order to confront the shooter. Angeli  Gomez, a parent at the shooting, criticized the police response. “The police were doing nothing  … They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere.”  Javier Cazares, one of many affected by the shooting and the father of a nine-year-old killed,  decided to run for local office. “I’m a parent first and my main goal is to fight for what’s right; to  do what needs to be done around here,” Cazares said. “Not just for my daughter and her friends  who passed, but also for her classmates who survived.”