Texas school shooting: Details emerge in community overwhelmed with grief

euronews.com:

Anguished bystanders begged the police to intervene while a gunman barricaded himself into a classroom and opened fire on primary school pupils in Texas, it has emerged.

The atrocity on Tuesday, which saw an 18-year-old gunman massacre 19 children and two teachers before being shot dead himself, was the worst school shooting the US has seen since Sandy Hook in 2012.

Eyewitnesses report that Salvador Ramos crashed his truck into a ditch, grabbed his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and shot at two people outside a nearby funeral home before approaching the school.

Officials say Ramos "encountered" a school district security officer outside, though there were conflicting reports from authorities on whether the men exchanged gunfire. 

After running inside, he then shot at and injured two Uvalde County police officers who were outside the building, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

After entering the school, Ramos came into a classroom, locked the door behind him and murdered the children and teachers inside one by one. The Department's Lt Christopher Olivarez described the act and its perpetrator as "complete evil".

But officials also report that a full 40 minutes to an hour elapsed between the altercation with the security officer and Ramos being killed by a tactical team member. An official told AP that Border Patrol agents had trouble breaching the classroom door and had to get a staff member to open the room with a key.

Juan Carranza, 24, who saw the scene from outside his house, said onlookers had been shouting at police outside: "Go in there! Go in there!" 

He added that, in his view, the police should have entered immediately without waiting for backup. "There were more of them. There was just one of him."

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