The gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers in their classroom in Texas had announced his intentions on social media to carry out a shooting in a school, the state’s governor has said.
Greg Abbott also said the gunman had posted on Facebook that he was going to shoot his grandmother. He said the gunman later posted a second time that he had done so.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook, said those messages were privately sent to another user.
The Texas governor told a news conference on Wednesday that the gunman had shot his grandmother and then driven away. She managed to get to a neighbour’s house and had contacted the police.
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The children who died were aged between seven and 10.
The 18-year-old gunman, identified as Salvador Ramos, was shot dead by police at the scene.
After shooting his grandmother, with whom he lived, the gunman shortly afterwards crashed his car close to the Robb elementary school in the town of Uvalde, about 80 miles from San Antonio. He took a rifle from the car and tried to enter the primary school.
Mr Abbott said that law enforcement officers at the school engaged the gunman to try to stop him. However, he got into the school through a back door and gained access to a classroom.
Texas state officials said on Wednesday that the gunman had barricaded himself in a classroom and started shooting children and teachers in the room.
The Texas Department of Public Safety said that the shooting ended when a Border Patrol tactical team shot and killed the gunman.
It said investigators were still trying to determine if the gunman, who lived in Uvalde, had planned the shooting. The gunman had one rifle when he went into the school and was wearing “a tactical vest carrier with no ballistic panels“.
It said the gunman had bought his weapons – two rifles – sometime after his 18th birthday earlier this month. After the shooting, one was found with him and the other in the truck he had driven to the scene.
The governor’s news conference was interrupted by his likely challenger in an election for the post to be held in November.
Democrat Beto O’Rourke approached the stage and said: “The time to stop the next shooting is right now, and you are doing nothing.”
Security officers escorted Mr O’Rourke from the auditorium.
Outside, Mr O’Rourke told reporters that he had come to the news conference because “we owe our kids something”.
“We owe the children in the next school where a gunman’s going to walk in with an AR-15 unless we intervene and stop that – we owe them something,” he said. “And that’s why I’m here.”
Mr Abbott said the “ability of an 18-year-old to buy a long gun has been in place for more than 60 years“.
He blamed the shooting on mental health challenges, rather than easy access to weapons including semi-automatic weapons.
“Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge.”
The governor said the gunman had given “no meaningful forewarning” of the violence he intended to unleash except for the Facebook messages.
The gunman’s grandmother remains in a critical condition in hospital.
