UVALDE, United States —
US President Joe Biden departed for Uvalde on Sunday to console residents mourning 19 children
and two teachers who were gunned down at an elementary school in the small
Texas town.
اضافة اعلان
Accounts are emerging of the ordeal faced by
survivors of the Tuesday attack, as Biden calls for action to prevent future
massacres in a country where efforts to tighten firearms regulations have
repeatedly failed.
“We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make
America safer. We can finally do what we have to do to protect the lives of the
people and of our children,” Biden said Saturday in a speech at the University
of Delaware.
The president and first lady are due to visit the
memorial outside Robb Elementary School on their arrival in Uvalde before
attending a mass then meeting with relatives of those caught in the shooting
and first responders.
As residents gathered in a central square in
Uvalde on Saturday to pay homage to the victims, haunting stories told by young
students who played dead while a gunman killed their classmates and teachers
were underscored by accounts of the slow reaction by police.
Ten-year-old Samuel Salinas was sitting in his
fourth-grade classroom when the shooter, later identified as Salvador Ramos,
18, barged in with a chilling announcement: “You’re all going to die.”
Then “he just started shooting,” Salinas told ABC
News.
Texas authorities admitted Friday that as many as 19
police officers were in the school hallway for nearly an hour without breaching
the room where the shooter was, thinking he had ended his killing. Officials
called this delay the “wrong decision.”
Ramos was finally killed by police.
Survivors of the attack have described making
desperate, whispered pleas for help in 911 phone calls during his assault. Some
played dead to avoid drawing the shooter’s attention.
By mid-morning Saturday, several dozen people had
gathered at Uvalde’s courthouse square, which has become a somber place of
homage to victims and survivors.
Twenty-one simple white crosses have been erected
around a fountain — one for each victim.
The Uvalde shooting was the deadliest school attack since 20
children and six staff were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in
Newtown,
Connecticut in 2012.
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