• USA A young man kills 19 children and two teachers in a shooting at a Texas school

An 18-year-old clerk at a local Wendy's, humiliated by his classmates for the type of clothes he wore, for having a stutter, for coming from a poor home, broke into a class of young children in a primary school in his town, Uvalde, Texas, and killed 19 students and two teachers, causing the largest massacre of its kind since the shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in December 2012, almost a decade ago, which killed 20 children. and five adults.

As that 20-year-old shooter did then, Salvador Ramos (18 years old) first shot a relative - his 66-year-old grandmother, in the face and who is in critical condition - and left in the direction of Robb Elementary School in the small town of 16,000 people - some 140 kilometers east of San Antonio - where he had studied to unload his fury and shoot at anyone who came his way.

What is frightening is that he announced the massacre on Facebook.

As reported by the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, at a press conference today, published a series of posts on Facebook about 30 minutes before the massacre.

In the first of them you could read: "I'm going to shoot my grandmother."

To then continue:

"I shot my grandmother" and "I'm going to shoot an elementary school"

.

According to Abbott, the woman called the police, the shooter fled and got into an accident with the vehicle he was driving to the school gates, then headed inside.

Thirty fateful minutes he resisted inside the school

before the local police were able to shoot him down and end the "carnage", as the president of the United States, Joe Biden, described it hours later.

The first agents displaced to the educational center with a clear Hispanic majority - some 500 students attended classes every day - began to break windows to try to save the lives of other students before being able to enter the classroom and arrest Ramos.

They could not prevent the massacre in a room full of minors, most of them 10 years old, in third and fourth grade of primary school, all of them identified.

Xavier López, 10, "was funny, never serious and with a big smile," as his mother, Felicha Martínez, described in an interview with

The Washington Post

.

Amerie Jo Garza, also 10, is already "on her way to heaven with the angels up there," as her father, Angel Garza, wrote on her Facebook account.

Uziyah Garcia was a kid "full of life," a great kid who loved anything with wheels, according to his family's account.

And so up to 19 children.

Ramos, a high school student, arrived at his old school driving a large

pickup

that he crashed and left lying in a nearby ditch before entering the school grounds.

His motives have not been made clear, but the constant teasing at school for years, coupled with a complicated childhood, marked by his mother's drug addiction, may be behind his tragic end.

A former classmate of the shooter has confirmed that he was constantly

bullied

and that "he was laughed at a lot"

.

From his boss at Wendy's, the hamburger chain, it is known that he was a very introverted young man, very given to silence and to little interaction with his co-workers.

"He was perceived as a kind of quiet person, that he does not say much. He did not really socialize with the other employees

," said Adrián Mendes.

"He just worked, got paid and came for his check."

It is a profile similar to that described by the students of the Uvalde institute, which he had frequently stopped attending.

"He almost never came," a friend who did not want to be identified, but to whom Ramos sent a photo with the semi-automatic weapons that he already had in his possession, told CNN.

In this regard, it has been confirmed that the shooter took advantage of his 18th birthday to buy two assault rifles

.

"It's the first thing he did when he turned 18," said state senator Ronald Gutierrez.

The weapons he purchased through a licensed dealer, according to the Texas Rangers report.

A witness, Adolfo Hernández, explained that his nephew was in a nearby class when Ramos started firing shots.

"He witnessed his little friend get shot in the face

," he said.

"He got hit in the nose and he just fell to the ground, and my nephew was shattered."

Uvalde's is the umpteenth massacre so far this year in the United States.

Just 11 days ago, the previous major incident was recorded, when another 18-year-old entered a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in an area with a high concentration of African-Americans, and killed 10 people and injured three others, in a crime with racist motivations.

Visibly affected and tired of dealing with situations that are already common in the day-to-day life of Americans, President Biden asked to confront the

lobby

of the arms industry after the Texas massacre.

"Why do we accept to live with this kind of massacres? Why do we let this continue to happen? It is time for us to turn this pain into action," he said in a message to the nation.

Biden, returning from a 17-hour plane ride from Asia, made no secret of his boredom.

"Another massacre at a Texas elementary school. Beautiful, innocent children,"

he said, visibly moved.

"I'm sick and tired of this. We have to act. And don't tell me that we can't have an impact on these carnage," in addition to calling for "courage" to stand up to the powerful arms industry and its multimillion-dollar profits.

The US president wondered "why this kind of massacre hardly happens anywhere else in the world. Why?", nations where there are also "mental problems, domestic disputes, where people are lost", but where they do not have to deal with these situations as frequently as in the first world power.

"Losing a child," he noted, "is like having your soul ripped out

, a hole in your chest that you feel swallows you and you can't get out, suffocates you."

Biden recalled the massacre at Connecticut's Sandy Hook school nearly 10 years ago

.

Since then, he noted, there have been 900 school shootings, sending a clear message to lawmakers to act and toughen gun sales laws at the federal level.

From Air Force One, Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-staff for the victims, a tragedy that prompted an immediate reaction from Vice President Kamala Harris.

"Enough is enough

," said the Californian.

"Our hearts continue to break. We have to act," she along the same lines as the president.

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