May 26 Texas shooting news

Dr. Lillian Liao, pediatric trauma medical director at University Hospital in San Antonio, told CNN that her hospital is currently treating three children injured in the Uvalde school shooting.

"They are critical but stable and will be continuing to receive care over the next days to weeks," she said.

"Broadly speaking ... we were treating destructive wounds, and what that means is that there were large areas of tissue missing from the body, and they required emergency surgery because there was significant blood loss," Liao told CNN's John Berman.

Liao blinked back tears as she described receiving the injured children.

She said that her unit had experience treating mass shooting victims from the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting, and they were able to prepare quickly for the Uvalde shooting patients.

But she said the hardest part was knowing that many of victims were likely already dead.

But, she added, "our job as the trauma center is to be focused on treating the patients that we did receive, and that's what we're going to do today." 

The hospital is also treating the gunman's grandmother, who officials say he shot in the face before fleeing their home and then getting into a crash near the school.

"She's critical but stable as well," Liao said.

Hear trauma surgeon here:

The father of a school shooting victim in Uvalde, Texas, told The Washington Post that he and others wanted to storm the elementary school to retrieve their children as they heard gunshots from inside.

Javier Cazares said he arrived at Robb Elementary soon after hearing something was going on at his daughter’s school, and he told the Post he was joined near the building’s front door by several other men who had children at the school.

The Washington Post reported that hours later, Cazares learned his daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, 9, had been shot and killed.

According to Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw, the gunman was in the school between 40 to 60 minutes before law enforcement forcibly entered and killed him.

Video posted to social media appears to show frustrated and distraught parents and other adults outside the school clashing with law enforcement officers, urging the officers to go inside and get the gunman or let them go inside themselves.

The gunman was in a standoff with law enforcement officers for about a half-hour after firing on students and teachers, Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican whose district includes Uvalde, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, citing a briefing he was given.

"And then [the shooting] stops, and he barricades himself in. That's where there's kind of a lull in the action," Gonzales said. "All of it, I understand, lasted about an hour, but this is where there's kind of a 30-minute lull. They feel as if they've got him barricaded in. The rest of the students in the school are now leaving."

Justice of the Peace Lalo Diaz said that when he was called to the scene of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and told by officers that multiple children had been killed, his "heart dropped knowing that I was going to go in and have to assess a scene so horrific," he told CNN's John Berman outside the school on Thursday.

Because the county, which has less than 50,000 people, does not have a medical examiner, it was Diaz's job to process the dead.

When he went inside, he saw "something I never want to see again."

He recognized the body of Irma Garcia, a teacher at the school who had been a classmate of his.

Diaz attended the school, as did his children. He called it "a pillar of the community."

He said he never thought a mass shooting could occur in his town.

"We're a community of hunters, we see guns regularly, we see people loading up to go dove hunting or deer hunting, but never like this. Never to this caliber that you say we're going to have multiple homicides or whatever. Normally it happens in a case-by-case basis and it's rare. Never would I have imagined in my wildest dreams that I would have had to have gone and assess a site in that condition," he said.

Hear Uvalde justice of the peace here:

Frank DeAngelis, who was principal of Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 when two gunmen killed 13 people on campus, told CNN a network of educational leaders who have experienced gun violence is available to help those at Robb Elementary School after Tuesday's shooting.

DeAngelis said after the Columbine shooting, Bill Bond, who was then-principal of Heath High School in Kentucky when a gunman opened fire and killed three schoolmates in 1997, called him to offer his support and guidance.

DeAngelis has since called multiple schools after mass shootings to provide the same support, he said, and has reached out and left a voice message for the principal of Robb Elementary.

As part of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, members of the Principal Recovery Network "reach out directly to their colleagues to provide much-needed support, share the combined wisdom of their experience with the larger principal community through various outlets, assist schools during recovery, and advocate for national school safety enhancements and violence prevention programs," according to its website.

DeAngelis credited improved police response times and the introduction of lockdown drills over the last two decades, but stressed that more must be done.

The fatal shooting of 19 children and two adults on Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas, has shocked the country, evoking memories of other tragic school shootings such as Columbine, Newtown and Parkland, and renewing calls for Congress to do something.

But the response to those calls from many Republican lawmakers is the same now as it pretty much always is: The country should not have stricter gun control.

Why do these Republicans refuse to act? Beyond the fact that many believe stricter gun control would not prevent such mass shootings, a look at the data reveals that there is simply no political pressure to do so.

While there are certainly some Americans who want stricter gun control, the public at large is far more split on the issue than a lot of commonly cited polling data would have you believe.

Read the full analysis:

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Analysis: Why Republicans feel little political pressure for stricter gun control

The National Rifle Association is set to hold its 2022 annual meeting in Houston on Friday, bringing together its top brass and several notable conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, for the first time in three years.

The NRA's annual meeting was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, but this year the organization is moving ahead with its plans, holding the meeting at a time when both gun rights and the organization itself have come under intense scrutiny, especially after a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, left 21 dead.

Read the full story:

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What to know about the NRA's annual meeting in Houston | CNN Politics

It's not that America can't stop its bloody sequence of mass killings. It's that it lacks the national cohesion and common will to do so.

The elementary school massacre in Texas underscored that the world's most powerful nation can't even ensure that its most vulnerable — young children — are safe from violent death at their desks. A more stunning failure of government would be hard to find.

A deep political and cultural estrangement on guns — caused principally by the right's blocking of efforts from Democrats and moderate Republicans to pass even modest safety measures — is boiling up again over Tuesday's shooting.

Mass killings are a sickeningly familiar background noise to daily life in the US, but the latest school bloodbath, which killed 19 children and two teachers, came as an especially devastating blow. It rekindled the sense of dread millions of American parents feel when say goodbye to their kids at school drop off.

And it will further scar a generation of students haunted by the perpetual fear of a school shooting -- a frightful vision for young minds that was only alleviated by Covid-19 pandemic virtual learning, which traumatized many of them in other ways.

Read the full analysis:

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Analysis: America's divide on guns is keeping schoolchildren in danger

Hundreds of people gathered at a vigil Wednesday night at the Uvalde County Fairplex, a community arena, for the victims of the school shooting at Robb Elementary.

"Amazing Grace" was played during the vigil as members of the community wept and hugged.

With 21 dead and 17 others injured, the attack Tuesday was the deadliest school shooting in almost a decade and shook a nation still reeling from a mass shooting just 10 days ago.

Nevaeh Alyssa Bravo, 10, has been identified as one of the victims killed at Robb Elementary, a family member told The Washington Post.

Her cousin, Austin Ayala, told The Post that she put a smile on everyone’s face and that her family is devastated.

Her grandmother, Esmeralda Bravo, attended a vigil in Uvalde on Wednesday night. She was photographed by CNN holding an image of Nevaeh.

Funeral services for the 10-year-old are pending, according to an online obituary by Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home.