The Uvalde, Texas, elementary school where 19 children and 2 teachers were killed in last month’s mass shooting won’t be standing much longer.
NBC News reported that Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin told the city council Tuesday that the Robb Elementary School will be demolished.
“You can never ask a child to go back or a teacher to go back in that school ever,” Mr. McLaughlin said at the meeting.
A timeline for the school’s demolition wasn’t given. In the interim, students will attend two other elementary schools in the city, according to USA Today.
KENS 5 in San Antonio reported that President Biden supported razing the school during a visit to Uvalde last month, and even offered federal funding to help with the job.
Tearing down a school after a mass shooting was a practice established by the Newtown, Connecticut, community in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Following the shooting in December 2012, demolition began on the school site less than a year later. By the fall of 2016, a new building had been finished.
The Uvalde community is still reeling from the rampage, especially as the investigation into the shooting reveals a police response that critics say was wholly inept.
“We do know this, there’s compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary was an abject failure and antithetical to everything we’ve learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre,” Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told state lawmakers, according to NBC News.
Two damning revelations have come to light recently in the shooting’s investigation.
The door to the classroom where the shooter was holed up was unlocked and did not require a key to enter it, as had been previously reported. And three minutes after the gunman had entered the campus, there were 11 officers on the scene who could have confronted the shooter.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.