Texas school massacre town begs Joe Biden to ‘do something’
A ten-year-old boy and an 18-year-old were arrested for threatening mass shootings, as Joe Biden visited the site of last week’s Texas school massacre.
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A fifth-grade student in Florida has been arrested for threatening to pull off a mass shooting, police said.
The 10-year-old boy, a student at Patriot Elementary School in Cape Coral, was handcuffed and walked into a police cruiser on Saturday night, local time, for making a written threat to conduct a mass shooting, according to the New York Post.
“This student’s behaviour is sickening, especially after the recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas,” Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said in a statement. “Making sure our children are safe is paramount.”
Florida 5th grader arrested for mass shooting threat https://t.co/8CMWW92qTupic.twitter.com/Q0ZcSIqbdx
— New York Post (@nypost) May 30, 2022
The sheriff’s office was tipped off to the alarming text messages and the Youth Services Criminal Investigations Division soon took on the case, due to the child’s young age.
Marceno noted that officers were quick to investigate the mass shooting threats.
“We will have law and order in our schools! My team didn’t hesitate one second…to investigate this threat,” he said.
Officers who responded to the Uvalde, Texas school shooting that claimed the lives of 19 fourth-graders and two teachers are facing backlash for their delayed response.
Detectives interviewed the Florida boy — whose name has been withheld because he is a minor — and developed probable cause for his arrest, police said.
Meanwhile, a Florida man posted images of himself suggesting he was heavily armed and headed to the “nearest school,” according to authorities over the weekend.
Florida man Corey Anderson threatened to go to 'nearest school' with weapons: sheriff https://t.co/QFYZTwM1Sfpic.twitter.com/GLRpbnLSrF
— New York Post (@nypost) May 30, 2022
Corey Anderson, 18, was arrested Sunday at a home after authorities received a tip earlier in the day that he had made the online threat while posting photos of himself with what appeared to be a rifle, handgun and tactical-style vest, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.
The photo was accompanied by a caption that read, “Hey Siri, directions to the nearest school,” authorities said.
A subsequent investigation determined that the handgun and rifle were airsoft guns, which shoot pellets rather than bullets.
“This type of threat is unacceptable,” Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a statement Sunday. “This man intentionally instilled fear into our community as a sick joke, but be warned, this is no laughing matter.”
Deputies will pursue anyone who makes school-based threats, Chronister said.
“Protecting students is our greatest priority,” the sheriff said. “We take school threats very seriously. If you see something suspicious, please contact us immediately.”
Anderson of Lutz was charged with threatening to conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism.
BIDEN URGED TO ‘DO SOMETHING’
Desperate pleas for a stop to the gun massacres plaguing the United States rang out during US President Joe Biden’s visit to Uvalde, where he prayed for the 19 children and two teachers slain by a teen gunman in the small Texas town.
“Do something!” rang out shouts from a crowd in the street as Mr Biden left Sacred Heart church where he attended Mass with mourning relatives.
“We will. We will,” Mr Biden responded to the crowd, before heading to private meetings with relatives of the dead and with first responders.
Mr Biden, accompanied by his wife, Jill Biden, was in Uvalde less than two weeks after making a similar trip to the site of another mass shooting – this time targeting African-Americans in a racist attack – in Buffalo, New York.
The first couple began their Sunday visit at a makeshift shrine at Robb Elementary School, where last Tuesday the teen gunman walked in with an AR-15-type semiautomatic and began his slaughter.
Both wearing black, the Bidens held hands in front of the memorial, walking slowly along the thicket of wreaths, bouquets, white crosses and blown-up photos of the slain children.
Mr Biden, whose adult son Beau died seven years ago this Monday from cancer, and whose first wife and infant daughter perished in a car accident, made the sign of the cross, appearing to wipe away a tear.
The arrival of the Bidens’ motorcade at the school was met with applause from a crowd.
However, illustrating the tension in the town, there were boos at the appearance of Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who strongly opposes new restrictions on gun ownership.
“We need changes,” shouted one man.
“Our hearts are broken,” Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller said at the church.
Mr Biden was not scheduled to speak publicly in Texas, but on Saturday he renewed his so-far fruitless call for Congress to overcome years of paralysis to toughen firearms regulations – especially on weapons like the AR-15.
“We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer,” Mr Biden said.
Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday attended the funeral of a victim of the Buffalo mass shooting – Ruth Whitfield, who was among 10 people killed on May 14, allegedly by a self-described white supremacist.
“Congress must have the courage to stand up, once and for all, to the gun lobby and pass reasonable gun safety laws,” Ms Harris tweeted.
The Uvalde shooting was the deadliest school attack since 20 children and six staff were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
But despite the epidemic of mass shootings and ever growing flood of private gun purchases, Congress has repeatedly failed to agree on possible new regulations.
This time might be different, some politicians say.
Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said there were “serious negotiations” underway involving members of both parties.
In Uvalde, Robert Robles, 73, said he was glad Mr Biden had visited to show concern but said the president needs to pass laws restricting powerful military style rifles, like the AR-15, and “protect these kids.”
GIRL ‘BLED OUT’ WAITING FOR HELP
Harrowing accounts emerged of the ordeal faced by survivors and victims of Tuesday’s attack, where the behaviour of the police is under severe scrutiny.
Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez said one of the young victim’s “bled out” waiting for police to help, according to her mothers account.
“Her child had been shot by one bullet through the back, through the kidney area,” Democrat Gutierrez told CNN’s State of the Union, the New York Post reported.
“The first responder that they eventually talked to said that their child likely bled out.
“In that span of 30 or 40 minutes extra, that little girl might have lived.
“So absolutely these mistakes may have led to the passing away of these children as well.”
Ten-year-old Samuel Salinas was sitting in his fourth-grade classroom when the shooter, later identified as Salvador Ramos, 18, barged in and announced: “You’re all going to die.”
Then “he just started shooting,” Salinas told ABC News.
Texas authorities admitted Friday that as many as 19 police officers were in the school hallway for nearly an hour before finally breaching the room and killing Ramos, saying the officers mistakenly thought that he had stopped killing and was now barricaded.
Parents have expressed fury and the Justice Department announced an inquiry “to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare.”
Surviving children describe making desperate, whispered pleas for help in 911 phone calls while police waited.
Some played dead to avoid drawing the shooter’s attention.
Eleven-year-old Miah Cerrillo smeared the blood of a dead friend on herself to feign death.
Salinas said he thinks Ramos fired at him, but the bullet struck a chair, sending shrapnel into the boy’s leg.
“I played dead so he wouldn’t shoot me,” he said.
Another student, Daniel, whose mother would not provide his last name, said he saw Ramos fire through the glass in the classroom door, striking his teacher.
Though his teacher lay on the floor bleeding, she repeatedly told the students, “’Stay calm. Stay where you are. Don’t move,’” Daniel told The Washington Post.
ANGRY ACTIVIST CONFRONTS PRO-GUN TEXAS SENATOR
Video has captured a confrontation between a male and Texas Senator Ted Cruz hours after the conservative politician spoke at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston.
“Why does this keep happening?” the man shouts inside a restaurant, accusing Senator Cruz of “taking blood money” by giving the speech days after the Robb Elementary School shooting.
The male, identified as Indivisible Houston activist Benjamin Hernandez, continued to shout as security pushed him out of the venue.
He says, “when 19 children died, that is on your hands … Ted Cruz that is on your hands.”
The activist asks Senator Cruz why he refuses to support further background checks for gun sales.
“The background checks wouldn’t have stopped the shooter,” Senator Cruz responds.
“You know what would have? The bill I introduced – ”
The activist interrupts: “We can make it harder for people to get guns in this country, sir.
“You know that, but you stand here, you stand at the NRA convention, it is harder when there are more guns to stop gun violence.”
Cruz responds: “You don’t know what you’re talking about”.
Hernandez later took to Twitter to defend his actions.
“I wasn’t going to let that f—ker walk into the restaurant where I was having dinner and not have him hear me. They can do something, but they just don’t want to. So let’s let them have it,” he wrote.
“Challenge them every single time. Don’t stop until they do something,” he said in a follow-up tweet.
GIRL COVERED HERSELF IN BLOOD TO SURVIVE
After watching her friend fatally shot in one of the US’s worst mass school shootings, 11-year-old Miah Cerrillo smeared the girl’s blood on her own body and “played dead”, ultimately saving her own life.
The girl first called 911 using a phone belonging to her teacher, who was also shot and killed in front of her, the New York Post reports.
Miah’s aunt, Blanca Rivera told KPRC the girl had gone into “survivor mode” when she covered herself in her friend’s blood, but the ordeal had left her traumatised and suffering from panic attacks.
The 18-year-old gunman shot and killed 19 students and two teachers, when he opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Several others were injured, including Miah, who was left with multiple bullet fragments in her back.
Before being shot and killed by police, Salvador Ramos barricaded himself inside a classroom, executing children and adults for almost an hour, as parents, desperate to reach their children, pleaded with police to allow them entry.
Miah’s father, Miguel Cerrillo, told the Washington Post he arrived at the school to find a police officer carrying his daughter, whose bloodied body was covered in lacerations.
Mr Cerrillo said he was not permitted to join his daughter on the school bus where she was placed, but they spoke through the window.
Miah told her dad she watched teacher, Eva Mireles, get fatally shot as she held her phone, which the young girl then used to dial 911, Mr Cerrillo said.
He said he gunman then shot Miah’s friend, leaving her seriously injured and bleeding profusely, prompting the quick-thinking fourth grader to play dead. Miah’s friend later died.
Miah was treated for her injuries at a local hospital and released.
It has also emerged that the grief-stricken husband of a teacher killed in the massacre died of a heart attack just two days later.
Joe Garcia died from grief after his wife of 24 years, Irma Garcia, was gunned down, her nephew said on Twitter.
“I truly am at a loss for words for how we are all feeling, please pray for our family, God have mercy on us, this isn’t easy … the pain doesn’t stop,” he wrote.
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