What to Know About the School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas

Read the latest about the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

A gunman killed 19 children and two teachers on Tuesday in a single classroom in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, a small city west of San Antonio. It was the deadliest school shooting since the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.

Here’s what we know so far.

The victims were mostly children.

Officials have not yet released the names or ages of the students or the two teachers who were killed, but family members have identified at least two of them: Amerie Jo Garza, 10, and Eva Mireles, a fourth-grade teacher in her early 40s.

Ms. Mireles’s aunt Lydia Martinez Delgado said that her niece had taught for 17 years and took pride in teaching mostly students of Latino heritage.

The school taught second through fourth graders. In addition to the 19 children who were killed, several other children were wounded.

Two of the injured children were upgraded to serious condition from critical condition on Wednesday morning at University Health, a hospital in San Antonio.

The gunman, 18, died at the scene.

The gunman was identified as an 18-year-old who was a resident of the same county where the shooting took place and had attended a nearby high school. Police officers killed him at the scene, Lieutenant Chris Olivarez, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, told the “Today” show.

He was armed with a pistol and possibly a rifle, Gov. Greg Abbott said. State Senator John Whitmire of Houston said he learned at a State Police briefing that the gunman had purchased two assault rifles this month, one of which was found in the school with at least seven 30-round magazines.

Investigators are still piecing together what happened and what the gunman’s motivations were. He appeared to have crashed a pickup truck through a barrier at the school before heading inside, where all of the deaths and injuries occurred in a single classroom, Lt. Olivarez told CNN.

At least two law enforcement officials who had tried to engage the gunman were injured, neither of them seriously. “Upon entering the building, Agents & other law enforcement officers faced gun fire from the subject, who was barricaded inside,” Marsha Espinosa, assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, wrote on Twitter.

Shortly before the shooting, a 66-year-old woman who officials said was the gunman’s grandmother was shot in her house in Uvalde. She was in serious condition on Wednesday. Her address is the same one the gunman listed on paperwork filed with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

It continued a devastating pattern in the United States.

The shooting is one of the deadliest school attacks on record. It is also one of more than 200 mass shootings to have been recorded in the United States so far this year. Just 10 days earlier, a gunman fatally shot 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store.

Gun control is in the spotlight.

President Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was set to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Steven M. Dettelbach’s confirmation would be a make-or-break moment for the president’s stalled agenda on gun control. Read more about Mr. Dettelbach here.

In an address to the nation on Tuesday, Mr. Biden did not call for specific gun control measures. “When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?” he asked.

The National Rifle Association is set to hold its annual meeting in Houston starting on Friday. Scheduled speakers include Mr. Abbott, former President Donald J. Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas.