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A 44 year-old teacher has been named as the first victim of the Texas elementary school massacre, as a frantic father shared a photo of his missing 10 year-old daughter.Â
Eva Mireles, a special ed teacher at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, was confirmed to have died by relatives Tuesday night.
She is married to Ruben Ruiz, 43, a cop at the local police department, with the couple parents to a college-age daughter.Â
Meanwhile, 10 year-old Annabelle Guadalupe Rodriguez remains missing, with her dad sharing a photo of her in the hopes of tracking her down.
Her dad, who has not been named, told Fox News that he hasn’t heard from her since gunman Salvador Ramos, 18, opened fire inside the school this afternoon.
The youngster’s dad has also given her photo to Texas Rangers in the hope that they’ll be able to track her down.
Eva Mireles, 44, a fourth-grade special education teacher was killed in the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas
Special education fourth-grade teacher Eva Mireles, 44, who has an adult daughter, was also killed in the massacre. She worked in the education system for 17 years and was a co-teacher at the school for at least five of those.Â
In her Robb Elementary School profile, she describes herself as an active runner, hiker and, sometimes, biker. Her husband, Ruben Ruiz, 43, is a police officer at the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District.
‘I’m furious that these shootings continue,’ Mireles’s aunt Lydia Martinez Delgado said. ‘These children are innocent. Rifles should not be easily available to all. This is my hometown, a small community of less than 20,000. I never imagined this would happen to especially loved ones … All we can do is pray hard for our country, state, schools, and especially the families of all,’ her aunt, Lydia Martinez Delgado, said in a statement.
 A mobile morgue was snapped pulling up outside the school earlier on Tuesday as medical examiners began the grim task of identifying the victims.
Also killed by Ramos was a teacher. The gunman himself was killed by a border control agent, and is believed to have been gunned-down by cops who responded to the incident.Â
Additionally, 13 children are being treated at the Uvalde Memorial emergency room as well as a 45-year-old man who suffered a ‘graze.’
Cops told a press conference Tuesday night that they’d work to contact the victims of the deceased as soon as their remains were identified.Â
Annabelle Rodriquez, 10, pictured here, a student at Robb Elementary School is missing, her frantic father told FoxNews
University Health San Antonio also confirmed they received a child whose condition is currently unknown and a 66-year-old woman who is critical condition.Â
Robb Elementary School, which has 600 students enrolled, is located in the city of Uvalde, hometown of Matthew McConaughey, 60 miles east of the Mexican border and 80 miles west of San Antonio.
Concerned parents were captured at the scene desperately searching for their children and video from the chaotic scene showed police arriving to the school campus with their guns in hand.
One widely shared video appears to show the suspected gunman approach the school while what sounds like gunfire is going off in the background.
Videos taken in the immediate aftermath of the shooting show mothers frantically running towards the campus to collect their kids.Â
Salvador Ramos, 18, shot his grandmother before going to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde; engaging border patrol agents nearby in a shootout; and then barricading himself inside the school, killing 14 students and a teacher
The school warned parents to stay away and instead collect their children from a rendezvous point after they had been ‘accounted for’.Â
‘Your cooperation is needed at this time by not visiting the campus. As soon as more information is gathered it will be shared.’
Ninety percent of the school’s students are Hispanic and there are some 70 teachers.
It is one many schools in the district that is a stone’s throw from the Mexican border, with the city of Coahuila 220 miles away. The school sits on the outskirts of the city of Uvalde, population 16,000.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin told Fox News that shots were fired off site, and that after shooting one person, the gunman ran to the school where he barricaded himself inside.Â
The district said that the city’s civic center will be used as a reunification center and that parents will be able to pick up their children there once everyone is accounted for.Â
A mobile morgue was seen arriving at the school on Tuesday afternoon.
Ted Cruz, a Republican US senator from Texas, tweeted that he and his wife are ‘lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde.’
Ken Paxton, the attorney general for Texas, told Fox News that more teachers should carry guns.
‘We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things,’ he said, adding that he had ‘never understood that argument’.
Eva Mireles, 44, a victim in the attack is married to a police officer assigned to the Uvalde School Distict
A woman cries while speaking on the phone outside the Ssgt Willie de Leon Civic Center, where students had been transported from Robb Elementary School to be picked up following the shooting
A board with the list of classes and teachers is displayed outside the Ssgt Willie de Leon Civic Center
‘We can harden these schools. We can create points of access that are difficult to get through.
‘We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly.Â
‘The reality is that we don’t have the resources to have law enforcement at every school.
‘So it takes time for law enforcement – now matter how prepared, no matter how good they are – to get there. So having the right training for some of these people at the school is the best hope.
Robb elementary school, which has 600 students enrolled, is located in Uvalde – 60 miles east of the Mexican border and 80 miles west of San Antonio
‘Nothing is going to work perfectly, but that, in my opinion it’s the best answer to this problem.’Â
But Senator Chris Murphy, a Democratic from Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook shooting took place, made an impassioned appeal for concrete action to prevent further violence.
‘This isn’t inevitable, these kids weren’t unlucky. This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day,’ Murphy said on the Senate floor.
‘I’m here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues: Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely,’ he added.
State police arrive at the scene of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on Tuesday
New video from the chaotic scene shows police arriving to the scene with their guns in hand
FBI agents arrive at Robb Elementary School following Tuesday’s shooting
Kamala Harris, the vice president, said:Â ‘Enough is enough. As a nation, we have to have the courage to take action and understand the nexus between makes for reasonable and sensible public policy to ensure something like this never happens again.’Â
The deadly violence in Texas follows a series of mass shootings in the United States this month.
On May 14, an 18-year-old white man shot 10 people dead at a Buffalo, New York grocery store.
Wearing heavy body armor and wielding an AR-15 rifle, the self-declared white supremacist allegedly livestreamed his attack, having reportedly targeted the store because of the large surrounding African American population.
The following day, a man blocked the door of a church in Laguna Woods, California and opened fire on its Taiwanese-American congregation, killing one person and injuring five.
Despite recurring mass-casualty shootings, multiple initiatives to reform gun regulations have failed in the US Congress, leaving states and local councils to enact their own restrictions.
The National Rifle Association has been instrumental in fighting against stricter US gun laws. Abbott and Cruz are listed as speakers at a forum that is being held by the powerful lobby in Houston, Texas later this week.
The United States suffered 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent compared to 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its latest data.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned the ‘monstrous’ shooting before directing her ire at colleagues that have stood in the way of gun reform.
‘Words are inadequate to describe the agony and outrage at the cold-blooded massacre of little schoolchildren and a teacher at Robb Elementary School today,’ Pelosi said in a statement.
‘This monstrous shooting stole the futures of precious children, who will never experience the joys of graduating from school, chasing the career of their dreams, falling in love, even starting a family of their own.’
Referring to the multiple mass shootings in recent weeks, the Democrat continued: ‘Across the nation, Americans are filled with righteous fury in the wake of multiple incomprehensible mass shootings in the span of just days.’
‘This a crisis of existential proportions – for our children and for every American. For too long, some in Congress have offered hollow words after these shootings while opposing all efforts to save lives,’ she said.
‘It is time for all in Congress to heed the will of the American people and join in enacting the House-passed bipartisan, commonsense, life-saving legislation into law.’
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