The worst school shootings over the last decade as 19 kids are killed in Texas massacre

The Sandy Hook Foundation issued a statement 10 years after the Connecticut massacre following Tuesday’s shooting at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 students. 

‘We are devastated about reports that multiple people are dead, including children,’ the Sandy Hook Foundation wrote on Twitter. ‘Our hearts are with the families and community as this tragic story unfolds.’ 

Salvador Ramos, 18, shot 19 elementary school students and three adults dead, including Ramos, on Tuesday morning after shooting his grandmother. Her condition is unknown. 

Ramos, equipped with a handgun and possibly a rifle, entered the school and opened fire around 11.30am.   

Additionally, 13 children are being treated at the Uvalde Memorial emergency room, as well as a 45-year-old man who suffered a ‘graze.’ 

The Texas shooting now ranks as the second worst school shooting in the US, falling behind Sandy Hook and just in front of Parkland shooting.  

The shooting at Robb Elementary School is the latest in a long line of gun atrocities to hit American high schools over the last decade. 

In December 2012 the US was hit by its worst-ever school massacre when gunman Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 elementary school students at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. 

He also killed his mom, four teachers, the school principal, and the school psychologist.

Here, DailyMail.com recalls some of the other gun outrages inflicted on US students over the preceding decade

SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, DECEMBER 2012: 27 DEAD, 2 INJURED 

In December 2012, the deadliest school shooting in America took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. 

Lanza arrived to the school with three guns – a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle, and two pistols after killing his mother, Nancy – with whom, he reportedly only communicated via email. 

When he arrived to the school around 9.30am, the doors were locked as part of a new safety feature the school had recently rolled out. He allegedly ‘shot the entrance into the building,’ according to CNN. 

The school psychologist and vice principal went to investigate after hearing ‘popping’ noises and the psychologist was shot by Lanza. 

The elementary school was placed in lockdown and students were ushered into restrooms and closets to hide. 

Lanza moved toward kindergarten and first-grade classrooms first. In one of the classrooms, he shot all 14 kindergarteners and six first-graders. 

By the time law enforcement arrived to the scene, 20 students and six staff members were killed. 

As law enforcement approached the 20-year-old, he shot himself. 

Although his motive is unknown, Lanza’s old writings were discovered years later and shed light into the young man’s mind. He had written to a fellow gamer that he had a ‘scorn for humanity’ and had been ‘desperate to feel anything positive for someone for my entire life.’ 

A child advocate’s for the state of Connecticut also said Lanza had severe mental health problems and suffered from anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder and  was on the autism spectrum. He was also preoccupied with violence, according to CBS News. 

With ease of access to his mother’s weapons and being home-schooled, the advocate said it was ‘proved a recipe for mass murder.’ 

MARYSVILLE PILCHUCK HIGH SCHOOL, OCTOBER 2014: 4 DEAD, 1 INJURED 

Marysville student Jaylen Fryberg, 17, gathered his friends around a table in the Washington state’s school cafeteria and shot each of them in the head one-by-one to take them to ‘the other side,’  in October 2014. He shot them with a ‘blank stare’ and shot them ‘left to right.’ 

Fryberg had sent a photo of the handgun to a friend just moments before he would open fire, killing four. He told the person he texted to call him before he did ‘the thing.’ 

After shooting the four students as others watched on, he shot himself as a teacher ran toward him, the Washington Post reported. 

The teen had methodically planned the massacre, even leaving a note for his parents with his funeral arrangements and what to do with his assets, if he had any. 

He had texted his father: ‘Read the paper on my bed. Dad, I love you.’ 

Inside the note, he told his parents he wanted to be ‘fully dressed in Camo in my casket’ and all his ‘trust money or whatever goes to my brother.’ 

Fryberg also apologized to his friends’ parents, but said he needed ‘ride or dies with me on the other side.’

‘I LOVE YOU FAMILY! I really do! More then anything,’ he wrote. ‘I needed to do this tho[ugh]…I wasn’t happy. And I need my crew with me too. I’m sorry. I love you.’ 

UMPQUA COMMUNITY COLLEGE, OCTOBER 2015: 9 DEAD, 9 INJURIED 

Student Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, opened fire in Snyder Hall at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, in October 2015 around 10.45am. 

He killed eight students and one teacher before police arrived. Authorities and Mercer engaged in a brief shootout, before Mercer turned the gun on himself and took his own life. 

More weapons were found in his apartment, which he shared with his mother, and he had handed a student a USB drive with his manifesto on it. 

‘It’s pretty well laid out that he was a dejected failure,’ Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said at the time. ‘The only thing that I can conclude from it is he was mentally and emotionally ill.’ 

His manifesto detailed a life of a lonely virgin, who self-described himself as the ‘most hated person in the world’ and said he hated black men, whom he said only cared about their ‘penises.’

Mercer also reportedly said he was constantly ‘under siege’ by ‘morons and idiots,’ the Oregonian reported.  

Mercer wrote: ‘What was it that was supposed to happen, what great event was it that was supposed to make me realize how much there was going for me? 

‘But for people like me there is another world, a darker world that welcomes us. For people like us this all that’s left. My success in Hell is assured.’

The young man also reportedly said he was ‘denied’ everything he deserved and likened himself the Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook shooters. 

‘Though we may have been born bad. Society left us no recourse, no way to be good,’ he reportedly wrote.  

‘I have been forced to align myself with demonic forces. What was once an involuntary relationship has now become an alignment, a service. I now serve the demonic Heirarchy(sic). When I die will become one of them. A demon. And I will return to kill again and again.’ 

NORTH PARK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, APRIL 2017: 2 DEAD, 1 INJURED 

Cedric Anderson, 53, entered the San Bernardino, California, school around 10.30am in April 2017, where his wife Karen Elaine Smith, also 53, worked as a special-education teacher.  

He told administrators he was there to see his wife and walked into her classroom, which was positioned near the office. 

He fired six shots from a Magnum revolver when he entered the classroom, killing his wife and an eight-year-old student and injuring another child. He reloaded the revolver and shot himself. 

Although the motive is unknown, many suspected his wife – who had recently divorced him  – was being abused, according to the San Bernardino Sun.

Since the shooting, her classroom IB, no longer exists. The classroom walls have been knocked down and it is now an open space for students to work on projects. 

The school remodeled its building and outfitted every classroom with tempered glass windows, installed steel doors with locks on the inside, and a door that leads to the outside, which is mandated by law.  

AZTEC HIGH SCHOOL, DECEMBER 2017: 2 DEAD, 0 INJURED 

Former student William Atchison, 21, disguised himself as student and hide in a bathroom with a Glock on the second floor of the New Mexico school, according to Fox News. 

The custodian reported ran down the hallways screaming about an active shooter and telling teachers to go into ‘lockdown.’ 

He killed a male student who walked into the bathroom before killing a girl in the hallway and then turned the gun on himself. 

The shooter had left a manifesto on a USB drive that was found on his body, where he had allegedly wrote: ‘Work sucks, school sucks, life sucks. I just want out…’ 

Atchison had been on the FBI’s radar since 2016 after he allegedly asked in a forum: ‘Where to find cheap assault rifles for a mass shooting?’ 

He told investigators he just liked to troll online forums and authorities found that he was not in possession of any weapons at the time after interviewing him at his parent’s house. 

MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS – PARKLAND, FEBRUARY 2018: 17 DEAD, 17 INJURIED 

The now-third biggest school shooting in US history happened in February 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day. 

Nikolas Cruz, then 19, shot and killed 14 students and three staff members and injured an additional 17. 

The shooter, who was adopted, shot students with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle. He began shooting students outside of the school before working his way inside, according to NBC News. 

After the shooting, he slipped past authorities by hiding among the crowd running out of the school. 

For years, Cruz was a subject of police attention as his parents had called 911 several times on him for being out of control and had been tripped off to the FBI about concerning behavior, NPR reported. 

Starting when Cruz was 10 years old, his mother reported seeing violent behavior and had called the police after he and his other adopted brother Zach had gotten into a fight. She also reported Cruz had pushed her up against a wall after taking an X-Box game away and he had used a BB gun to shoot a chicken. 

After his mother died, he went to live with a family friend and had reportedly gotten in a fight with their son. 

He told police: ‘The thing is, I lost my mother a couple days ago. So like, I’m dealing with a bunch of things right now. I kind of got mad. And I started punching walls and stuff and a kid came at me and threw me on the ground. And he kicked me out of the house.’ 

The family claimed he put a gun to their son’s head and had done it to his adoptive mother as well before. 

Cruz had also been expelled from two school, was self-harming and had reportedly been diagnosed with depression, NPR reported. 

He pleaded guilty in October 2021 and now faces the death penalty.  

SANTA FE HIGH SCHOOL, MAY 2018: 10 DIED, 12 INJURED 

Dimitrios Pagourtzis, then 17, killed 10 and injured 12 others at Santa Fe High School in Texas in May 2018. 

A student said Pagourtzis hid a shotgun and a handgun under his trench coat before opening fire in a first-period art class. 

The then-student told police he did not kill anyone he liked because he wanted them to be able to tell the story, AP reported.  

Authorities say Pagourtzis planned the killings, carried out with weapons owned by his father. Though Pagourtzis allegedly wrote about his intention to carry out the attack, authorities have not indicated a motive for the violence. 

Although the motive is unknown, a student’s mother said her daughter had rejected Pagourtzis romantically and her daughter, Shana Fisher, had made clear that she was not interested in him. 

‘He continued to get more aggressive,’ the mother told AP. ‘She finally stood up to him and embarrassed him.’ 

The incident took place one week before the shooting and it is unclear if that drove Pagourtzis to kill. 

Police also said they found multiple IEDs, pressure cookers, Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, propane tanks, and other homemade explosives near the school and parking lot after the shooting. 

He had engaged in a 25-minute shootout with police before surrendering after being injured. 

Pagourtzis is currently awaiting trial. He faces 40 years in prison.  

SAUGUS HIGH SCHOOL, NOVEMBER 2018: 2 DEAD, 3 INJURED 

Nathaniel Berhow, 16, killed two students and injured two others at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, in November 2018. 

Authorities said the attack was planned, but the victims were chosen at random. 

‘It was a planned attack; it was deliberate. He knew how many rounds he had, for example,’ Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said at the time, according to NBC Los Angeles. 

Berhow was dropped off at the school by his mother and was standing in the quad alongside other students. Authorities said he was standing away from students and was still before moving toward the center of the quad, where he dropped his backpack and began firing at students. 

He shot five people in 16 seconds, NBC Los Angeles reported. 

Berhow also shot himself in an attempted suicide and was taken to the hospital, where he later succumbed to his injuries. 

The motive for the attack is still unknown.  

OXFORD HIGH SCHOOL, NOVEMBER 2021: 4 DIED, 7 INJURED  

The most recent well-known school shooter is 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, who opened fire at Oxford High School in Michigan after a guidance counseling meeting with his parents at the school. 

Four students were killed and seven more people were injured in the shooting. 

Crumbley had a meeting with school administrators, and his mother was contacted via voicemail by the school about her son’s inappropriate ammunition-related  internet search.

According to the prosecutor, the mother and father also failed to ask Ethan if he had his gun with him, or where his gun was, and did not inspect his backpack.

Instead, the teen returned to class and the shooting occurred later.

His parents were also arrested after a large-scale manhunt. James and Jennifer were captured in the basement of a building in Detroit, less than half a mile from the Canadian border. 

All the Crumbleys are being held at the Oakland County Jail. His parents are currently facing trial for four counts of manslaughter and have requested their trial be moved out of Oakland County. 

Ethan is awaiting trial, which is schedule for September, and he faces life in prison.