“We could never ask a child to go back”: Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School set to be demolished following mass shooting

A month after the Uvalde school shooting by Salvador Ramos, the mayor of Uvalde, Texas, announced the demolition of Robb Elementary School on June 21.

The decision to tear down the school where 19 students and two teachers died was made during a city council meeting on Tuesday. When asked by one of the attendees whether the school would be demolished, mayor Don McLaughlin said:

"My understanding...I had a discussion with the superintendent... that school will be demolished. We could never ask a child to go back, or a teacher to go back into that school ever."

However, there has been no information on the date or time the school will be razed. Robb Elementary school has nearly 600 students in the second, third, and fourth grades.

President Joe Biden had also previously expressed support for the school's demolition.

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Uvalde school to be razed like Sandy Hook

Robb Elementary is not the first school to be demolished after a tragedy. Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the site of the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, was also demolished and rebuilt in 2013. The mass shooting orchestrated by a 20-year-old gunman had killed 20 students and six staff members in December 2012.

At the Uvalde council meeting, McLaughlin also said he was frustrated by how the probe was going and how there was no easy way to get answers on the matter.

There has been raging public anger over the police response to the shooting. The fact that heavily armed officers waited for more than an hour to engage with the gunman is heavily criticized.

Speaking on the matter, Steven McCraw, the Director of Public Safety, Texas, stated that over 19 armed officers were waiting in the hallway outside classrooms 111 and 112 before a U.S. Border Patrol-led tactical raided the school.

McCraw reiterated his statement, saying:

"The officers had weapons, the children had none. The officers had body armor, the children had none. The officers had training, and the subject had none. One hour, 14 minutes, and eight seconds - that is how long the children waited, and the teachers waited, in Room 111 to be rescued."

He further added:

"Three minutes after the subject entered the west building, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the subject."

Pointing fingers at on-scene commander Pete Arredondo, McCraw stated that the former "waited for radio and rifles, waited for shields, and he waited for SWAT." "Lastly, he waited for a key that was never needed."

Given that Arredondo failed to do his job, community members and the Uvalde victims' parents have demanded his resignation during an emotional school board meeting.