A Texas man went next door with a rifle and fatally shot five of his neighbors, including an 8-year-old boy, after they asked him to stop firing rounds in his yard because they were trying to sleep, authorities said Saturday. The suspect, identified as 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza, remained at large more than 18 hours after the shooting and authorities warned that he might still be armed. The attack happened just before midnight Friday near the town of Cleveland, north of Houston, on a street where some residents say it is not uncommon to hear neighbors unwind by firing off guns. San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said Oropeza used an AR-style rifle, and as the search for him dragged into Saturday evening, authorities had widened their efforts to as far as “10 to 20 miles" from the murder scene. He said Oropeza may still have a weapon but that he believes authorities have the rifle used in the shooting. Capers said they found clothes and a phone while combing a rural area that includes dense layers of forest but that tracking dogs had lost the scent. Also Read: Police: 5 people killed in shooting at home north of Houston “He could be anywhere now,” Capers said. Capers said the victims were between the ages of 8 and 31 years old and that all were believed to be from Honduras. All were shot “from the neck up," he said. The attack was the latest act of gun violence in what has been a record pace of mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year, some of which have also involved semiautomatic rifles. The mass killings have played out in a variety of places — a Nashville school, a Kentucky bank, a Southern California dance hall, and now a rural Texas neighborhood inside a single-story home. Capers said there were 10 people in the house — some of whom had just moved there earlier in the week — but that that no one else was injured. He said two of the victims were found in a bedroom laying over two children in an apparent attempt to shield them. A total of three children found covered in blood in the home were taken to a hospital but found to be uninjured, Capers said. Also Read: 2 US Army helicopters crash in Alaska, killing 3 soldiers FBI spokesperson Christina Garza said investigators do not believe everyone at the home were members of a single family. The victims were identified as Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 8. The confrontation followed the neighbors walking up to the fence and asking the suspect to stop shooting rounds, Capers said. The suspect responded by telling them that it was his property, Capers said, and one person in the house got a video of the suspect walking up to the front door with the rifle. The shooting took place on a rural pothole-riddled street where single-story homes sit on wide 1-acre lots and are surrounded by a thick canopy of trees. A horse could be seen behind the victim's home, while in the front yard of Oropeza's house a dog and chickens wandered. Rene Arevalo Sr., who lives a few houses down, said he heard gunshots around midnight but didn't think anything of it. “It's a normal thing people do around here, especially on Fridays after work,” Arevalo said. “They get home and start drinking in their backyards and shooting out there.” Capers said his deputies had been to Oropeza's home at least once before and spoken with him about “shooting his gun in the yard.” It was not clear whether any action was taken at the time. At a news conference Saturday evening, the sheriff said firing a gun on your own property can be illegal, but he did not say whether Oropeza had previously broken the law. Capers said the new arrivals in the home had moved from Houston earlier in the week, but he said he did not know whether they were planning to stay there. Across the U.S. since Jan. 1, there have been at least 18 shootings that left four or more people dead, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today, in partnership with Northeastern University. The violence is sparked by a range of motives: murder-suicides and domestic violence; gang retaliation; school shootings; and workplace vendettas. Texas has confronted multiple mass shootings in recent years, including last year's attack at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde; a racist attack at an El Paso Walmart in 2019; and a gunman opening fire at a church in the tiny town of Sutherland Springs in 2017. Republican leaders in Texas have continually rejected calls for new firearm restrictions, including this year over the protests of several families whose children were killed in Uvalde. A few months ago, Arevalo said Oropeza threatened to kill his dog after it got loose in the neighborhood and chased the pit bull in his truck. “I tell my wife all the time, ‘Stay away from the neighbors. Don’t argue with them. You never know how they're going to react,'” Arevalo said. “I tell her that because Texas is a state where you don't know who has a gun and who is going to react that way.”

The Uvalde school district fired police chief Pete Arredondo on Wednesday under mounting pressure in the grieving Texas town to punish officers over letting a gunman at Robb Elementary School remain in a fourth-grade classroom for more than an hour with an AR-15 style rifle as 19 children and two teachers were killed. In a unanimous vote, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s board of trustees fired Arredondo in an auditorium of parents and survivors of the May 24 massacre. Arredondo, who did not attend the meeting, becomes the first officer to lose his job following one of the deadliest classroom shootings in U.S. history. His ouster came three months to the day after the tragedy, and less than two weeks before students return to school in Uvalde, where some children remain too scared or scarred to go back inside a classroom. Cheers from the crowd followed the vote, and some parents walked out of an auditorium in tears. Outside, several Uvalde residents called for other officers to be held accountable. “Coward!” some in the audience yelled as the meeting got underway. Arredondo, who has been on leave from the district since June 22, has come under the most intense scrutiny of the nearly 400 officers who rushed to school but waited more than 70 minutes to confront the 18-year-old gunman in a fourth-grade classroom. Most notably, Arredondo was criticized for not ordering officers to act sooner. Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has said Arredondo was in charge of the law enforcement response to the attack. Minutes before the meeting of the Uvalde school board got underway, Arredondo’s attorney released a scathing 4,500-word letter that amounted to the police chief’s fullest defense to date of his actions. Over 17 defiant pages, Arredondo is not a fumbling school police chief who a damning state investigation blamed for not taking command and wasted time by looking for keys to a likely unlocked door, but a brave officer whose level-headed decisions saved the lives of other students. It alleges that Arredondo warned the district about a variety of security issues in the schools a year before the shooting and asserted he wasn’t in charge of the scene. The letter also accused Uvalde school officials of putting his safety at risk by not letting him carry a weapon to the school board meeting if he were to attend, citing “legitimate risks of harm to the public and to Chief Arredondo.” “Chief Arredondo is a leader and a courageous officer who with all of the other law enforcement officers who responded to the scene, should be celebrated for the lives saved, instead of vilified for those they couldn’t reach in time,” George Hyde wrote. Following the vote, Hyde’s office did not immediately return a request for comment. Uvalde school officials have been under mounting pressure from victims’ families and members of the community, many of whom have called for Arredondo’s termination. Superintendent Hal Harrell had first moved to fire Arredondo in July but postponed the decision at the request of the police chief’s attorney. Read: Uvalde school police chief on leave after mass shooting Among those at the meeting was Ruben Torres, father of Chloe Torres, who survived the shooting in room 112 of the school. He said that as a former Marine, he took an oath that he faithfully executed willingly, and did not understand why officers did not take action when leadership failed. “Right now, being young, she is having a hard time handling this horrific event,” Torres said. Shirley Zamora, the mother of a student at Robb Elementary, said accountability shouldn’t end with Arredondo’s dismissal. “This is just going to be the beginning. It’s a long process,” she said. Only one other officer — Uvalde Police Department Lt. Mariano Pargas, who was the city’s acting police chief on the day of massacre — is known to have been placed on leave for their actions during the shooting. The Texas Department of Public Safety, which had more than 90 state troopers at the scene, has also launched an internal investigation into the response by state police. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, said McCraw, the state police chief, also deserves scrutiny. “You fail at something so badly that people are getting hurt, then certainly we have to have some greater accountability,” he said. “And accountability means losing your job, so be it.” School officials have said the campus at Robb Elementary will no longer be used when students return Sept 6. Instead, campuses elsewhere in Uvalde will serve as temporary classrooms for elementary school students, not all of whom are willing to return to school in-person following the shooting. School officials say a virtual academy will be offered for students. The district has not said how many students will attend virtually, but a new state law passed last year in Texas following the pandemic limits the number of eligible students receiving remote instruction to “10% of all enrolled students within a given school system.” Schools can seek a waiver to exceed the limit but Uvalde has not done so, according to the Texas Education Agency.   New measures to improve school safety in Uvalde include “8-foot, non-scalable perimeter fencing” at elementary, middle and high school campuses, according to the school district. Officials say they have also installed additional security cameras, upgraded locks, enhanced training for district staff and improving communication.

An exterior door at Robb Elementary School did not lock when it was closed by a teacher shortly before a gunman used it to get inside and kill 19 students and two teachers, leaving investigators searching to determine why, state police said Tuesday.   State police initially said a teacher had propped the door open shortly before Salvador Ramos, 18, entered the school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24.   They have now determined that the teacher, who has not been identified, propped the door open with a rock, but then removed the rock and closed the door when she realized there was a shooter on campus, said Travis Considine, chief communications officer for the Texas Department of Public Safety. But, Considine said, the door that was designed to lock when shut did not lock.    “We did verify she closed the door. The door did not lock. We know that much and now investigators are looking into why it did not lock,” Considine said.   Investigators confirmed the detail through additional video footage reviewed since Friday’s news conference when authorities first said that the door had been left propped open. Authorities did not state at that time what had been used to prop open the door.   Considine said the teacher initially propped the door open but ran back inside to get her phone and call 911 when Ramos crashed his truck on campus. Read: Biden says US sending medium-range rocket systems to Ukraine   “She came back out while on her phone, she heard someone yell, ‘He has a gun!’, she saw him jump the fence and that he had a gun, so she ran back inside,” removing the rock when she did, Considine said.   Steve McCraw, the head of DPS, hadn’t said why the teacher initially propped open the door when it was first detailed Friday. The first mention of a door left propped open, which officials now say didn’t happen, led to questions about the teacher’s actions and whether she had made a horrific mistake.   Since the shooting, law enforcement and state officials have struggled to present an accurate timeline and details of the event and how police responded, sometimes providing conflicting information or withdrawing some statements hours later. State police have said some accounts were preliminary and may change as more witnesses are interviewed.   San Antonio attorney Don Flanary told the San Antonio Express-News that the Robb Elementary School employee, whom he’s not naming, first propped open the door to carry food from a car to a classroom, and that she immediately moved to close it when she realized the danger.   “She kicked the rock away when she went back in. She remembers pulling the door closed while telling 911 that he was shooting,” Flanary told the newspaper.   “She thought the door would lock because that door is always supposed to be locked,” Flanary said.   Flanary did not immediately return telephone messages left at his office from The Associated Press.   Investigators are also still trying to interview Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who state police have said was the commander of the school shooting scene while it happened. Arredondo has not responded to multiple requests for comment from The Associated Press.   McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has said Arredondo treated the active scene as a hostage situation and as if children were no longer at risk, while 19 police officers waited in the school hallway outside the classroom where Ramos was.   McCraw called that the “wrong decision,” saying the focus of the investigation has shifted to Arredondo and the police response. Read: High prices, Asian markets could blunt EU ban on Russian oil   Other officers in the Uvalde city and schools police departments continue to sit for interviews and provide statements, but Arredondo has not responded to DPS requests for two days, Considine said.   Later Tuesday, the Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas, which represents police officers, urged its member officers to cooperate with “all government investigations” into the shooting and police response and endorsed a federal probe already announced by the Justice Department.   The organization was also sharply critical of the constantly changing narrative of events that has emerged so far.   “There has been a great deal of false and misleading information in the aftermath of this tragedy. Some of the information came from the very highest levels of government and law enforcement,” CLEAT said. “Sources that Texans once saw as iron-clad and completely reliable have now been proven false.”      

Texas authorities said Friday that the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers inside an elementary school discussed his interest in buying a gun in private online conversations, but backed away from earlier descriptions that he made public threats less than an hour before the attack. Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday, a day after the shooting, that “the only information that was known in advance was posted by the gunman on Facebook approximately 30 minutes before reaching the school.” Abbott’s claim prompted questions about whether technology companies could have provided advance warning. But on Friday, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety said the gunman made the threatening comments in a private message.  “I want to correct something that was said early on in the investigation, that he posted on Facebook publicly that he was going to kill, that he was going to shoot his grandmother and secondly after that that he was going to, that he had shot her and that third he was going to go shoot up a school,” Steven McCraw said. “That did not happen.” Facebook had already noted on Wednesday that the threats were in direct text messages, not a public post. Also read: Gunman kills at least 18 children at Texas elementary school McCraw did not say to whom 18-year-old Salvador Ramos sent the messages. McCraw also told reporters Friday that Ramos asked his sister to help him buy a gun in September 2021, but that she “flatly refused.” He did not say how authorities learned of that request. McCraw shared information from four more of Ramos’ social media private messages. In a Feb. 28 four-person chat, McCraw said that “Ramos being a school shooter” was discussed. In a March 1 four-person chat, he said Ramos discussed buying a gun. In a March 3 four-person chat, another person said “word on the street is that you’re buying a gun.” McCraw said Ramos replied, “Just bought something.” On March 14, McCraw said Ramos shared the words “10 more days” in a social media post. Another user asked “Are you going to shoot up a school or something?” McCraw said. He said Ramos replied, “No and stop asking dumb questions and you’ll see.” McCraw did not identify any of the other people included in those chat groups. The department did not immediately respond to a request Friday for more detail, including screenshots of the communications mentioned during the news conference. Authorities have said Ramos legally purchased two guns not long before the school attack: an AR-style rifle on May 17 and a second rifle on May 20. He had turned 18 just days earlier, permitting him to buy a rifle under federal law. Also read: 3 teens killed, 1 injured in gas station shooting in U.S. Texas Friday’s briefing came after authorities spent three days providing often conflicting and incomplete information about the law enforcement response in Uvalde.  

A gunman stormed into an elementary school Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers in the United States’ deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade. Law enforcement officers killed the shooter, identified as a local 18-year-old who had shot and wounded his grandmother and spelled out his violent plans in online messages shortly before the massacre at Robb Elementary. Investigators say they don’t yet know a motive for the shootings. A look at what we know so far: WHAT HAPPENED IN UVALDE? The attacker, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face at their Uvalde home, then fled in her truck as she summoned help, according to Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas Public Safety Director Steve McCraw and other officials. A short distance away, Ramos crashed the truck outside the school, got out with a rifle and approached a back door, officials said. They said an officer assigned to the school “engaged” Ramos, but the gunman got into the building and down a hallway to a fourth-grade classroom. After locking the classroom door, he opened fire around 11:30 a.m. with an AR-15-style rifle, carrying multiple magazines. A team including local officers and Border Patrol agents ultimately forced the door open and shot Ramos to death after he fired at them, police said. Other officers and responders shattered some of the school’s windows so teachers and students could escape. Ramos was wearing a tactical vest, though not body armor, according to state senators who said they were briefed on the shooting. There was another AR-15-style rifle in his truck, and a backpack with several magazines full of ammunition was found near the school entrance. WHO WERE THE VICTIMS? Authorities haven’t yet released the victims’ names, but some information about them has emerged from their families. Eliahna Garcia was an outgoing 10-year-old who loved to sing, dance, play sports and be with her family, according to aunt Siria Arizmendi. Uziyah Garcia was only 8 and “the sweetest little boy that I’ve ever known,” said grandfather Manny Renfro, recalling how the youngster was already able to master football pass patterns. Xavier Javier Lopez, 10, had been looking forward to a summer of swimming. Ebullient and loving, he was “just enjoying life, not knowing that this tragedy was going to happen today,” cousin Lisa Garza said. Swift-footed Layla Salazar, 10, had won six races at the school’s field day. “She was just a whole lot of fun,” said her father, Vincent Salazar, remembering how she danced to TikTok videos and sang along with him to the Guns N’ Roses song “Sweet Child O’ Mine” every morning on the way to school. Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10, hadn’t wanted to go to school Tuesday, appearing to think that something bad would happen, her mom, Veronica Luevanos, told Univision. A cousin of Jailah’s also was killed. Eva Mireles, 44, had been teaching for 17 years, according to a welcome letter to students she wrote last fall. She and her husband, a school police officer, had a grown daughter. Mireles wrote that she loved running and hiking, and relative Amber Ybarra said she had an adventurous spirit. WHO WAS THE GUNMAN? Ramos lived in Uvalde itself, a predominantly Latino city of about 16,000 people in a farming area roughly 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the Mexican border and 85 miles (135 kilometers) from San Antonio. A high school dropout, Ramos had no known criminal record or history of mental health problems, Abbott said. Also Read: 'Horrifying' conspiracy theories swirl around Texas shooting In the half-hour before the school killings, Ramos used Facebook to say that he was going to shoot his grandmother, then that he had done so, and then that he was going to shoot up an unspecified elementary school, officials said. Facebook said Ramos’ posts were private messages that came to light after the killings. Investigators also have been scrutinizing an Instagram account that apparently belonged to Ramos. In the days before the shooting, posts featured a photo of a hand holding an ammunition magazine and another photo of two AR-15-style rifles. The account asked another Instagram user to share the latter photo with her 10,000 followers; she declined, saying it was “scary” and she barely knew him. On the morning of the massacre, the account linked to Ramos sent her an ominous message: “I’m about to.” WHERE DID THE GUN COME FROM? The gunman legally bought his weapons soon after his 18th birthday and days before the attack, law enforcement officials told state lawmakers. He purchased one rifle from a federally licensed gun dealer in the Uvalde area May 17, according to a state police briefing to state Sen. John Whitmire. On May 18, the gunman bought 375 rounds of ammunition. Then, two days later, he bought a second rifle.  WHAT DON’T WE KNOW? Authorities haven’t disclosed a full list of the victims. Nor have many important details about the attack been made public.   Among them: what transpired between Ramos and the school officer who first encountered him; who saw the online posts attributed to him; what, if any, history he had with Robb Elementary; and why he went on the rampage. “We don’t see a motive or catalyst right now,” McCraw said Wednesday afternoon. HOW MANY MASS SHOOTINGS HAVE THERE BEEN IN U.S. SCHOOLS? There have been 14 shootings that have claimed four or more victims’ lives at U.S. schools and colleges since 1999, when two students killed 12 of their peers and a teacher at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999. That’s according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University, and to other AP reporting. These mass attacks have killed 169 people in all. The massacre in Uvalde was the deadliest since December 2012, when 20 first graders and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut by a gunman who had just killed his mother. In 2007, a Virginia Tech student fatally shot 32 people.    

By now it's as predictable as the calls for thoughts and prayers: A mass shooting leaves many dead, and wild conspiracy theories and misinformation about the carnage soon follow. It happened after Sandy Hook, after Parkland, after the Orlando nightclub shooting and after the deadly rampage earlier this month at a Buffalo grocery store. Within hours of Tuesday's school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, another rash began as internet users spread baseless claims about the man named as the gunman and his possible motives. Also read: Onlookers urged police to charge into Texas school Unfounded claims that the gunman was an immigrant living in the U.S. illegally, or transgender, quickly emerged on Twitter, Reddit and other social media platforms. They were accompanied by familiar conspiracy theories suggesting the entire shooting was somehow staged. The claims reflect broader problems with racism and intolerance toward transgender people, and are an effort to blame the shooting on minority groups who already endure higher rates of online harassment and hate crimes, according to disinformation expert Jaime Longoria. “It's a tactic that serves two purposes: It avoids real conversations about the issue (of gun violence), and it gives people who don't want to face reality a patsy, it gives them someone to blame,” said Longoria, director of research at the Disinfo Defense League, a non-profit that works to fight racist misinformation. In the hours after the shooting, posts falsely claiming the gunman was living in the country illegally went viral, with some users adding embellishments, including that he was “on the run from Border Patrol.” “He was an illegal alien wanted for murder from El Salvador,” read one tweet liked and retweeted hundreds of times. “This is blood on Biden’s hands and should have never happened.” The man who authorities say carried out the shooting, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, is a U.S. citizen, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a news conference on Tuesday. Other social media users seized on images of innocent internet users to falsely identify them as the gunman and claim he was transgender. On the online message board 4Chan, users liberally shared the photos and discussed a plan to label the gunman as transgender, without any evidence to back it up. One post on Twitter, which has since been deleted, featured a photo of a trans woman holding a green bottle to her mouth, looking into the camera, headphones hanging from one ear. “BREAKING NEWS: THE IDENTITY OF THE SHOOTER HAS BEEN REVEALED,” claimed the user, saying the shooter was a “FEMBOY” with a channel on YouTube. None of that was true. The photo actually depicted a 22-year-old trans woman named Sabrina who lives in New York City. Sabrina, who requested her last name not be published due to privacy concerns, confirmed to The Associated Press that the photo was hers and also said she was not affiliated with the purported YouTube account. Sabrina said she received harassing responses on social media, particularly messages claiming that she was the shooter. She responded to a number of posts spreading the image with the misidentification, asking for the posts to be deleted. “This whole ordeal is just horrifying,” Sabrina told the AP. Another photo that circulated widely showed a transgender woman with a Coca-Cola sweatshirt and a black skirt. A second photo showed the same woman wearing a black NASA shirt with a red skirt. These photos didn’t show the gunman either — they were of a Reddit user named Sam, who confirmed her identity to the AP on Wednesday. The AP is not using Sam’s last name to protect her privacy. “It’s not me, I don’t even live in Texas,” Sam wrote in a Reddit post. Authorities have released no information on the gunman's sexuality or gender identification. Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar fit both unfounded claims about Ramos in a single now-deleted tweet that also misspelled his name. “It’s a transsexual leftist illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos,” Gosar tweeted Tuesday night. Gosar’s office did not return a message seeking comment. In some cases, misinformation about mass shootings or other events are spread by well-intentioned social media users trying to be helpful. In other cases, it can be the work of grifters looking to start fake fundraisers or draw attention to their website or organization. Then there are the trolls who seemingly do it for fun. Fringe online communities, including on 4chan, often use mass shootings and other tragedies as opportunities to sow chaos, troll the public and push harmful narratives, according to Ben Decker, founder and CEO of the digital investigations consultancy Memetica. Also read:School massacre continues Texas’ grim run of mass shootings “It is very intentional and deliberate for them in celebrating these types of incidents to also influence what the mainstream conversations actually are,” Decker said. “There’s a nihilistic desire to prove oneself in these types of communities by successfully trolling the public. So if you are able to spearhead a campaign that leads to an outcome like this, you’re gaining increased sort of in-group credibility.” For the communities bearing the brunt of such vicious online attacks, though, the false blame stirs fears of further discrimination and violence. Something as seemingly innocuous as a transphobic comment on social media can spark an act of violence against a transgender person, said Jaden Janak, a PhD candidate at the University of Texas and a junior fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. “These children and adults who were murdered yesterday were just living their lives," Janak said Wednesday. “They didn’t know that yesterday was going to be their last day. And similarly, as trans people, that’s a fear that we have all the time.”

An 18-year-old gunman opened fire Tuesday at a Texas elementary school, killing at least 18 children as he went from classroom to classroom, officials said, in the latest gruesome moment for a country scarred by a string of massacres. The attacker was killed by law enforcement. The death toll also included three adults, according to state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who said he had been briefed by state police. But it was not immediately clear whether that number included the attacker, or how many people were wounded. The massacre at Robb Elementary School in the heavily Latino town of Uvalde was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. grade school since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, almost a decade ago. Read: 200 bodies found in Mariupol basement as war rages in east “My heart is broken today,” said Hal Harrell, the school district superintendent, announcing that all school activities were canceled until further notice. “We’re a small community, and we’re going to need your prayers to get through this.” The attack also came just 10 days after a deadly, racist rampage at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket that added to a yearslong series of mass killings at churches, schools and stores. And the prospects for any reform of the nation’s gun regulations seemed as dim as in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook deaths. President Joe Biden appeared ready for a fight, calling for new gun restrictions in an address to the nation hours after the attack. “As a nation we have to ask, when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name are we going to do what has to be done?” Biden asked. “Why are are willing to live with this carnage?” Many of the injured were rushed to Uvalde Memorial Hospital, where staff members in scrubs and devastated victims’ relatives could be seen weeping as they walked out of the complex. The gunman, who was wearing body armor, crashed his car outside the school before going inside, Sgt. Erick Estrada of the Texas Department of Public Safety told CNN. He killed his grandmother before heading to the school with two military-style rifles he had purchased on his birthday, Gutierrez said. Read: Israel busts Hamas group for terrorist attack schemes “That was the first thing he did on his 18th birthday,” he said. Officials did not immediately reveal a motive, but the governor identified the assailant as Salvador Ramos and said he was a resident of the community about 85 miles (135 kilometers) west of San Antonio. Ramos had hinted on social media that an attack could be coming, Gutierrez said, noting that “he suggested the kids should watch out.” A Border Patrol agent who was working nearby when the shooting began rushed into the school without waiting for backup and shot and killed the gunman, who was behind a barricade, according to a law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about it. The agent was wounded but able to walk out of the school, the law enforcement source said.  

 A manhunt was underway Sunday for a former sheriff’s deputy wanted in the fatal shooting of three people in Austin, Texas, as an official said it wasn’t known if the suspect was still in the city. Interim Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon said those who live near where the shooting happened late Sunday morning no longer had to shelter in place, but he said they should “remain vigilant.” He said officials were transitioning the search for Stephen Broderick, 41, from that area to a “fugitive search.” Also Read: Police ID gunman in FedEx shooting as young male in 20s “The victims were all known to this suspect.,” Chacon said. “At this point, we do not think this individual is out there targeting random people to shoot. That does not mean he is not dangerous.“ Earlier in the day, nearby residents had been asked to shelter in place and to call their neighbors to check on them. Chacon had said earlier that officials were concerned that Broderick “might possibly take a hostage and be himself sheltered somewhere waiting for us to leave.” Chacon said Broderick is 5 feet, 7 inches (1.7 meters) tall and Black. He was wearing a gray hoodie, sunglasses and a baseball cap. Chacon said police do not know if he’s in a vehicle or on foot. He said that Broderick was a former deputy with the Travis County sheriff’s office, which is based in Austin. Also Read: 8 dead in shooting at FedEx facility in Indianapolis Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza said in a statement that Broderick had been arrested for sexual assault of a child last June and was released on $50,000 bond. He said that the district attorney’s office on Sunday filed a motion to revoke that bond and is actively supporting law enforcement as they pursue Broderick. Sheriff’s spokeswoman Kristen Dark tells the Austin American-Statesman that Broderick, a property crimes detective, resigned after the arrest. The newspaper also reports that Broderick’s wife filed for a protective order and divorce shortly after his arrest. Chacon said Broderick is suspected in the killing of two Hispanic women and one Black man. He said Broderick knew the victims but didn’t elaborate on how or provide a motive for the shootings. Chacon also said a child was involved but that the child has been located and is safe. Brenda Torres said she was driving by when she saw a little boy flag down a car and a Black man lying facedown on the ground. “I saw the little boy point down the street,” Torres said. “There was someone lying on the ground. I thought someone had just fallen down or something. As my light turns green and I’m driving, I see cop car after cop car after cop car rushing toward where I just was.” Chacon said the three were not shot in a building but did not give any further details. Following the shooting, there was a large presence of emergency responders at the scene, including dozens of police cars, several ambulances, two SWAT trucks and two police helicopters. Later Sunday, law enforcement began leaving the area. The area includes a strip mall containing several retail stores and large apartment complexes situated near wooded rolling hills. Josh Katzowitz, who had been shopping at the nearby Trader Joe’s, said police and ambulances came “pouring in” to the area as he was leaving. He didn’t hear any shooting. “The cops had their guns out,” he said. “Some had pistols, some had rifles and they were strapping on bulletproof vests. There were all of a sudden ambulances, sirens and police cars. There were cops coming from everywhere.”

Two sisters were were killed and the 2-year-old son of one was wounded in a shooting at a university dormitory in Texas that police say was an isolated event without identifying a shooter.