Texas school shooting: US President Joe Biden to meet victims' families as he visits scene - Sky News

The Justice Department has said it will review the law enforcement response to the Texas shooting, as US President Joe Biden visited bereaved families after the country's worst school attack in a decade.

The president and First Lady Jill Biden visited a memorial at the school in Uvalde, Texas, before attending a church service and also meeting with survivors and first responders after landing in the state on Sunday.

Mr Biden was pictured reaching out to touch large photographs of the young children killed, while Mrs Biden laid a bouquet of 21 white flowers, one for each of those killed, as they paid their respects.

After leaving the church, they walked past a crowd of about 100 people who chanted "do something"

He responded: "We will."

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The president and his wife also spoke with Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (CISD) superintendent Hal Harrell and Mandy Gutierrez, principal at Robb Elementary School.

Image: Mr Biden and first lady Jill Biden pay their respects at the Robb Elementary School memorial

It comes as investigators seek to determine how critical mistakes were made in the response to the shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.

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Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said it will conduct a "Critical Incident Review" of law enforcement's response to the shooting at the request of Uvalde's mayor.

He said: "The goal of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events.

"The Justice Department will publish a report with its findings at the conclusion of its review."

He added the review would be conducted in a fair, impartial and independent manner and that the findings would be made public.

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Bidens visit site of school shooting

Image: President Joe Biden arrives at Robb Elementary School to honor the victims killed in this week's school shooting, Sunday, May 29, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. (Aaron M. Sprecher via AP)

Some have been calling on the FBI to look into police actions following a decision to allow the shooter, Salvador Ramos, to remain in a classroom for nearly an hour while officers waited in the hallway and children in the room made panicked 911 calls for help.

Police say the 18-year-old entered the school last week with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle after earlier killing his grandmother at the house they shared.

Official accounts of how police responded to the shooting have flip-flopped wildly, with calls mounting for an independent probe.

Mr Biden, a Democrat, has repeatedly called for major changes to America's gun laws but has been unable to get legislation past Republican opposition.

Image: The couple laid a bouquet of 21 white flowers to pay their respects

Image: Members of the community met the president and first lady during their visit to Texas

Read more:
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Is America too deeply divided to deal with its gun problem?

Following the shooting, Mr Biden gave a commencement address at the University of Delaware.

He said: "Evil came to that elementary school classroom in Texas, to that grocery store in New York, to far too many places where innocents have died.

"We have to stand stronger. We must stand stronger. We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer."

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The Texas visit is Mr Biden's third trip as president to a mass shooting site.

Earlier this month, he visited Buffalo, New York, after a shooting that left 10 black people dead at a supermarket.

Vice President Kamala Harris called for a ban on assault-style weapons during a trip to Buffalo this weekend, saying that in the wake of the two back-to-back mass shootings such arms are "a weapon of war" with "no place in a civil society".

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2022-05-29 19:18:45Z
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Ukraine says forces holding out against Russian assault on key Donbas city - Financial Times

Ukraine said its forces were holding out against an intense Russian assault in the eastern Donbas region amid heavy artillery fire but implored the west to supply weapons to help Kyiv turn the tide of the war.

Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region that makes up half of the Donbas, said on Sunday that Ukraine had driven Russian troops back from a highway, allowing Kyiv’s forces to supply the key city of Sievierodonetsk.

Russia is concentrating its forces on capturing Sievierodonetsk, the last big city in Luhansk still under Ukrainian control, as part of an offensive in the Donbas more than three months into President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

The city is suffering the worst damage in the war since a Russian siege essentially destroyed the southern port city of Mariupol.

However, Russia’s advance has slowed despite what Ukrainian forces described as a tactical retreat under enormous artillery bombardments.

Russia’s forces have surrounded two-thirds of Sievierodonetsk in an attempt to encircle it but have yet to progress further than a hotel on its outskirts, where Ukrainian forces have inflicted heavy casualties, Haidai told Ukrainian television.

“They’re hiding-out there, but they can’t move forward,” he said.

The siege of Sievierodonetsk, where Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky says his forces are outnumbered 20 to one, marks a strategic shift by Moscow to overwhelm smaller pockets of resistance one at a time, after Russia’s forces were forced to retreat from central Ukraine and driven back in the Kharkiv border region north of the Donbas.

In a late-night address on Saturday, Zelensky said, “the situation is very complicated” in the region, “where the Russian army is trying to squeeze at least some result for themselves”. Ukraine’s president described conditions as “indescribably difficult”.

Ukraine still believes it can recapture the area once it gets more weapons supplies from the west and can outgun Russia in a long-range artillery contest.

“Every day we are bringing closer the time when our army will surpass the occupiers technologically and by firepower,” Zelensky said, adding that he expected “good news” on western supplies in the next week.

Ukraine said it had received Danish-made Harpoon anti-ship missiles and US howitzers but was awaiting approval for multiple rocket launchers, which would allow Kyiv to go much further in hitting Russia’s supply lines.

“It is hard to fight when you are attacked from a 70km distance and have nothing to fight back with,” presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter.

Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have foundered after Putin hardened his desire to capture more territory and annex areas his forces have already captured in the south-east.

In an 80-minute phone call with France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday, Putin blamed Ukraine for the collapse of the talks and said Russia was open to more negotiations.

But Macron and Scholz told Putin a negotiated end to the war had to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Zelensky told Dutch television that Ukraine wanted to recapture the territory it has lost to Russia since the invasion, including most of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south as well as parts of the Donbas, before resuming negotiations.

“I don’t think we can return all of our territory in full through military means,” including the Crimean peninsula and separatist-held areas of the Donbas Russia seized in 2014, he said. “If we decide to go that way, we will lose hundreds of thousands of people.”

Capturing the whole of Luhansk, which makes up half of the Donbas along with neighbouring Donetsk, would mark a propaganda coup for Putin, who has framed the war as an attempt to “liberate” Russian speakers there.

Russia rerouted most of its forces in the area when a series of humiliating battlefield defeats forced it to scale back its ambitions.

Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said any Russian victory in Luhansk would probably be pyrrhic.

“Putin is now hurling men and munitions at the last remaining major population center [ . . . ] as if taking it would win the war for the Kremlin. He is wrong,” they wrote.

The brutal war of attrition had reduced Russia’s personnel and firepower so much, they added, that “regardless of which side holds the city, the Russian offensive at the operational and strategic levels will probably have culminated, giving Ukraine the chance to restart its operational-level counteroffensives to push Russian forces back.”

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2022-05-29 12:36:16Z
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Texas school shooting: Instructor who teaches police to deal with gunmen says Uvalde officers showed failings in leadership and mindset - Sky News

In a series of sheds on the edge of a Texas airfield sits the training centre that has set the national standard for how American police deal with active gunmen.

It is barely a hundred miles from Uvalde, where 19 students and two teachers were shot dead at their school on Tuesday.

The admission by police that they got it wrong as the shooting was unfolding, that they should have confronted the gunman earlier, has raised the spectre that lives could have been saved.

Police in Uvalde say they were properly trained but it is clear something went catastrophically wrong as the minutes ticked by with gunman Salvador Ramos inside the school.

The Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) centre near San Marcos in Texas has trained 130,000 law enforcement and fire officials nationwide in "dynamic force-on-force scenario-based" courses. It is the FBI's training of choice.

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They watched the events in Uvalde with horror and believe failings in the police response were exposed.

Assistant director John Curnutt said: "I understand why it was difficult that they were put into the situation they were put into, but I understand that we know enough about these incidents that we should be training for stuff like this."

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Image: John Curnutt is assistant director of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training centre

A veteran of 18 years in SWAT teams, Mr Curnutt has been in that situation himself.

"The plan A doesn't work? What's the plan B, C, D? We have to have these capabilities, it's required of us.

"Winston Churchill once said: 'Sometimes doing your best isn't good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required'."

In Uvalde on Tuesday, he said, law enforcement showed failings in leadership, equipment, mindset and applying the training they would have undergone.

"Every single one of these events is a watershed moment for us. Every single one of these breaks our heart and chews up our soul just a little bit each time.

"We want to make sure that, if we can't prevent them, we're darn sure going to respond to them to the best of our ability."

It is a sad reality of American life that, for years, schools have been required to conduct active shooter drills, teaching the youngest of children how to deal with the most awful of situations.

Staff at the ALERRT centre ran through an exercise on how to confront a gunman in a mock classroom.

Read more:
Full timeline of police response to massacre
'We knew he was a monster': Texas gunman had sinister nickname on social media
'Wrong decision' not to storm classroom where gunman was holed up, official admits

It was chilling to be in that room as he shouted threats and fired blank rounds from an assault weapon before being taken down by responding officers.

Everyone there recognised it is easier to get things right in a training scenario, much harder to do so facing automatic fire in the heat of battle.

But Mr Curnutt said, whatever the risks, that is the job.

"Those kids deserved better. Those kids deserved everything we could throw at it."

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2022-05-28 20:38:07Z
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Ukrainian forces may have to retreat in Luhansk to avoid capture, governor says - Sky News

Ukrainian forces may have to retreat in Luhansk to avoid being captured, the region's governor has said.

Serhiy Gaidai said Russian troops have entered Severodonetsk, the largest Donbas city still in Ukrainian hands.

Some 90% of the city's buildings are damaged, he said, adding: "The Russians will not be able to capture Luhansk region in the coming days as analysts have predicted.

"We will have enough strength and resources to defend ourselves.

"However it is possible that in order not to be surrounded we will have to retreat."

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Earlier in May, Russia abandoned its attempt to take Ukraine's capital Kyiv, instead shifting its focus to the southern Donbas region, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting since 2014.

Russian-backed fighters said on Saturday that they had taken control of Lyman, a rail hub west of Severodonetsk, but Ukraine said its forces were blocking Russian efforts to reach Sloviansk, to the southwest.

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The UK Ministry of Defence said earlier that Russian ground forces had taken several villages northwest of Popasna, a town in Severodonetsk district.

Read more:
Severodonetsk: Fear, suspicion and split loyalties in the city where situation is spiralling out of control
'We need to hold back this horde': Shelling intensifies in Donbas as Russian soldiers try to encircle key cities

Satellite images from Maxar showed Russian artillery, armoured units moving from the north and east of the city toward Lyman, and the aftermath of widespread artillery shelling that damaged dozens of homes and buildings.

Extensive damage could be seen in Popasna, with Russian military units deployed in the surrounding area.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy remained defiant, however, saying in his nightly video address: "If the occupiers think that Lyman and Severodonetsk will be theirs, they are wrong.

"Donbas will be Ukrainian."

Image: Day 93 of the war in Ukraine

Key developments:
• EU officials hope to reach a deal by Sunday banning deliveries of Russian oil - but only by sea, 75% of the bloc's supply. Pipeline supplies will still be allowed - a compromise aimed at placating Hungary
• Talks continue between Sweden, Finland and Turkey regarding bids by the first two to become members of NATO. Turkey has so far refused to back the applications
• Mr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of weaponising a global food crisis, saying they are not ready for peace talks. Russia said Kyiv have stalled the talks

Subscribe to Ukraine War Diaries on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Spreaker

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials say that Russia aims to impose permanent rule across the south, including Mariupol, a city now mostly reduced to rubble.

In the region of Kherson, one of the first places to fall under Russian control after the February invasion, Ukraine said Russia was fortifying its position and trapping civilians with constant shelling.

The region's Ukrainian governor, Hennadiy Laguta, said the humanitarian situation was critical in some areas and people were finding it very difficult to leave.

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2022-05-28 05:16:43Z
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Texas police admit it was 'wrong decision' not to enter classroom sooner - Financial Times

Police in Texas have admitted it was the “wrong decision” for officers not to enter a classroom at Robb Elementary School in the city of Uvalde sooner during a shooting on Tuesday that killed 19 children and two teachers.

Authorities in the state are rushing to piece together the complex timeline of events surrounding Tuesday’s attack amid mounting criticism from school parents and local residents over the amount of time it took to end the massacre, and contradictory statements about when officers first entered the school.

In a press conference on Friday, Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw acknowledged that officers’ hesitance to enter the classroom where the shooting was taking place was a mistake.

“Of course it was not the right decision,” McCraw said. “It was a wrong decision, period. There’s no excuse for that.”

He said that the reason for the delay, which authorities believe allowed 18-year-old Salvador Ramos to gun down students in the school unchallenged for almost an hour, stemmed from the belief that all of the children in the classroom had already been killed.

The perpetrator had fired hundreds of rounds into the two classrooms in four minutes, McCraw said, which might have led officers to believe that “there may not be anybody living any more”.

He added that the school district chief of police “was convinced at the time that there was no more threat to the children and that the subject was barricaded and that they had time to organise with proper equipment”.

However, a 9-year-old survivor of the shooting told local news outlet KENS 5 that police officers told the students in the classroom to ask for help if they needed it. When a student called out for help, following the police’s orders, she was shot by the gunman.

Multiple children inside the classroom also made 911 calls to ask for help starting at 12:03pm, while 19 police officers were in the hallway, McCraw said. Tactical teams and police officers did not breach the door of the classroom until 12:50pm.

Texas governor Greg Abbott said during a press conference in Uvalde on Friday he was “livid” that some of the information he had received from law enforcement officials earlier this week about the shooting, and had relayed to reporters on Wednesday, was inaccurate.

Abbott said he “wrote down notes in detail” following meetings with officials that underpinned Wednesday’s press conference, but that details had emerged later in the week that contradicted those accounts.

“As everyone has learned, the information I was given turned out, in part, to be inaccurate, and I am absolutely livid about that,” he said.

The details come as former US president Donald Trump is set to appear on Friday at a high-profile National Rifle Association event in Houston, Texas.

Trump will be appearing alongside other prominent Republicans including Texas senator Ted Cruz, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, and North Carolina lieutenant-governor Mark Robinson at a leadership forum organised by the NRA’s lobbying arm.

Abbott was scheduled to speak at the event in person, but pulled out overnight to instead hold a press conference in Uvalde, where he announced support measures, including counselling and workers’ compensation, for families of the shooting victims and residents of the city. He pre-recorded a video for the NRA conference.

“America needs real solutions and real leadership in the moment, not politicians and partisanship,” Trump said in a social media post explaining why he would uphold his “longtime commitment” to speak at the NRA convention. He added he would “deliver an important address to America”.

The NRA’s decision to push ahead with its annual convention, which was postponed several times due to the coronavirus pandemic, has proven controversial in light of the shooting.

On Friday, hundreds of people gathered outside the convention venue in Houston with signs protesting the event. “I think it’s totally disgusting,” said Linda Bennett, who lives in the city. “It’s disrespectful to the entire country, especially the families in Uvalde.”

Tuesday’s massacre was the second mass shooting in barely a fortnight after a gunman killed 10 people in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, on May 14.

Houston mayor Sylvester Turner asked the NRA to consider postponing the event because a legally binding contract prevents the city from cancelling it outright.

“What I would say to the NRA, even though the city cannot cancel a contract because we don’t agree with their position on guns, the NRA can postpone it a week or two to allow the families to bury their children,” Turner said in a television interview on Thursday.

Beto O’Rourke, the former Democratic presidential candidate who will be running against Abbott later this year in the race for governor, has called for people opposed to gun violence to join him at a rally in Houston Friday afternoon.

O’Rourke interrupted Abbott and other officials at a press conference in Uvalde on Wednesday, accusing the incumbent governor of “doing nothing” to stop gun violence in Texas.

Texas congressman Dan Crenshaw and state senator John Cornyn were also due to appear at the Houston conference, but pulled out.

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2022-05-27 21:32:47Z
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Nato jets scrambled to intercept two Russian aircraft near Finland - Metro.co.uk

The Kremlin planes were intercepted and flew back to Russia today (Picture: Getty Images)

Nato fighter jets have intercepted Russian aircraft near Finland’s border with Norway.

Intelligence identified the aircraft as a Mikoyan MiG-31 ‘Foxhound’ and a Sukhoi Su-24 ‘Fencer’ jet.

Nato scrambled F-35 fighter jets yesterday amid rising tensions between Finland and Russia.

The Russian jets had been spotted near Finnmark, in Norway’s far north, but did not enter official Norwegian airspace.

The Royal Norwegian Air Force posted: ‘Two Russian aircraft north of Finnmark today. CRC Sørreisa reported the aircraft, and NATO ordered our F-35s on their wings.

‘The Russian aircraft flew to the Norwegian Sea before returning east.’

The aircraft flew over the Norwegian Sea and then returned to Russia.

A Norwegian F-35 fighter jet during NATO exercise ‘Cold Response’ in March (Picture: AFP)

The identification of two Russian aircraft prompted the response (Picture: Royal Norwegian Air Force)

Russia has issued an increasing number of threats to both Finland and Sweden in recent weeks, leading to increased tensions between the nations.

Both Finland and Sweden defied Kremlin warnings to announce their bids to join Nato on May 18.

The Kremlin issued a chilling warning that the moves were both a ‘grave mistake with far reaching consequences’.

Representatives from both countries will travel to Madrid next month to firm up their plans to join the military alliance.

In relation to today’s incident Stine Barclay Gåsland, of the Norway’s Air Force, called for calm.

More: Sweden

She told local news outlet TV 2: ‘We are used to it happening, and there is nothing illegal in it.

‘We pay close attention to all activity in our local areas.’

But trespassing into Norwegian airspace would have provoked ‘a more aggressive action’, she added.

There are always two F35s are always on standby, in what’s termed the Quick Reaction Alert for Nato.

Pilots have to be poised and ready to become airborne in 15 minutes or less.

Norway’s Armed Forces have scrambled aircraft 34 times in the last year.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

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2022-05-27 13:05:00Z
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Texas shooting: Ted Cruz storms off after journalist confronts him - Metro.co.uk

A journalist asked Ted Cruz why gun massacres are an American problem (Picture: Sky News / AP)

Ted Cruz was left flustered and stormed off an interview as a journalist confronted him and asked why mass shootings are an American problem.

The Republican senator was at a vigil alongside Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, remembering those lost during the recent Robb Elementary School shooting.

Cruz – who received $176,274 (£140,000) from the National Riffle Association up to 2019 – was then confronted by Sky News journalist Mark Stone.

He cornered Mr Cruz and asked him whether it was time for a change in gun laws in the United States.

Between 2009 and 2018, there were 288 school shootings in the US – the next highest number was in Mexico, where there were eight.

Both Ted Cruz and Governor Greg Abbott have been staunch allies of liberal gun laws in the US, which Democrats say fuel the problem of mass shootings in US schools.

They were not met with a frosty reception in Texas, partly because of the state’s traditional backing for gun ownership, which is enshrined in the second amendment.

When asked by Mark Stone why American exceptionalism was ‘so awful’, Cruz hit back.

Ted Cruz was left flustered at the situation (Picture: Sky News)

Texas is a traditional state that supports the first amendment (Picture: AP)

People in Texas are mourning over the tragic shooting (Picture: AFP)

He told Sky News: ‘You know, I’m sorry you think American exceptionalism is awful. You’ve got your political agenda. God love you.’ 

After repeatedly being told ‘You can’t answer that’ by Stone, Cruz turned and said: ‘Why is it that people come from all over the world to America? Because it’s the freest, most prosperous, safest country on Earth. Stop being a propagandist.

‘You know, it’s easy to go to politics.

‘Inevitably, when some violent psychopath murders people, if you want to stop violent crime, the proposals the Democrats have — none of them would have stopped this.’

The vigil was held to remember the people lost during the shooting (Picture: AFP)

America has had 288 school shootings between 2009 and 2018 (Picture: EPA)

‘There are 19 sets of parents who are never going to get to kiss their child tonight.’

The Texas senator then stormed out of the interview and left the scene.

Republicans like Governor Abbott don’t see gun laws as the issue.

He instead blamed the massacre on the mental health of gunman Salvador Ramos.

During a later interview Cruz, echoed this sentiment when talking to CNN, saying: ‘Inevitably when there’s a murderer of this kind, you see politicians try to politicise it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens.’ 

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

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2022-05-26 16:14:00Z
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