The mayor of the city has announced that Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where a shooter killed 19 pupils and two teachers, will be demolished.
On Tuesday, June 21, after a tearful council meeting when residents were seeking answers over the shooting, Mayor Don McLaughlin made the statement.
The mayor, however, did not specify a date for the school’s demolition.
Since the rampage in May, many in the town have grown more irate at the police, who they claim took more than an hour to engage the attacker.
Robb Elementary has nearly 600 students in the second, third and fourth grades
“My understanding – and I had this discussion with the superintendent – is that school will be demolished. You can never ask a child to go back or teacher to go back in that school ever,” McLaughlin said.
US President Joe Biden last month suggested knocking down the school.
Robb Elementary will not be the first school to be demolished after a mass shooting.
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was demolished after 20 students aged six and seven years old and six staff members were shot in 2012. A new school was built on the same land.
Texas’s public safety chief said on Tuesday there were enough police on the scene in Uvalde to have stopped the gunman three minutes after he entered the building. But police waited for more than an hour outside classrooms before a team made entry.
Steven McCraw told a state Senate hearing the police response was an “abject failure” and accused the on-scene commander of putting officers’ lives above the children’s.
The attack by an 18-year-old identified as Salvador Ramos – has led to renewed national debate about gun regulations.