All the deaths and injuries sustained in the Texas school shooting on Tuesday took place in one fourth-grade classroom at Robb Elementary School.
This was confirmed to CNN by Lt. Chris Olivarez, spokesperson for the Texas Department for Public Safety. The gunman was said to have barricaded himself in this one room, killing two teachers and 19 children, he said.
Law enforcement broke windows at the school in a bid to give students and teachers an escape route.
"Just goes to show you the complete evil from this shooter," Olivarez told CNN's John Berman and Shimon Prokupecz.
"It's a small classroom, you can have anywhere from 25 to 30 students in there, plus there were two teachers in there. ... So don't have exact number of how many students were in that classroom, but it could vary ... It was a classroom setting, a typical classroom setting where you have mass groups of children inside that classroom all together, with nowhere to go," Olivarez said.
Tuesday's massacre in the town of Uvalde was the deadliest shooting at a school in the US since 20 children and six adults were shot dead at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012.
An 18-year-old gunman, identified by authorities as Salvadore Ramos, entered Robb Elementary School in the city of Uvalde, Texas, at around 11:32 AM.
He made his way inside the school with a handgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle before "horrifically, incomprehensibly" opening fire, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said.
“My heart is broken today,” said Hal Harrell, the school district superintendent, per The Guardian. “We’re a small community, and we’re going to need your prayers to get through this.”
President Joe Biden responded to the tragedy by calling for new gun restrictions in an address some hours after the rampage.
“As a nation we have to ask, when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name are we going to do what has to be done?” Biden asked. “Why are we willing to live with this carnage?"
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