Uvalde Mayor Announces Robb Elementary Will Be Torn Down After Shooting

During a two-hour city council meeting in the town of Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, Mayor Don McLaughlin announced that Robb Elementary will be demolished after a discussion with Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent, Hal Harrell.

“You can never ask a child to go back, or a teacher to go back in that school ever,” McLaughlin said of the elementary school where the mass shooting unfolded on May 24 that killed 19 children and two teachers.

Although there is currently no timeline for the demolition, Superintendent Harrell confirmed that Robb Elementary students would be split between the nearby Dalton Elementary School and Flores Elementary School during the upcoming school year.

The Houston Chronicle reports, “Students and staff will not be returning to the Robb Elementary campus,” Harrell wrote in a statement on June 1.

“We are working through plans on how to serve students on other campuses and will provide that information as soon as it is finalized. We are also working with agencies to help us identify improvements on all Uvalde CISD campuses.”

On Wednesday, Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo was placed on administrative leave after increased backlash around his lack of action was placed in the spotlight in newly surfaced evidence.

A report from CNN quotes Harrell: “Because of the lack of clarity that remains and the unknown timing of when I will receive the results of the investigations, I have made the decision to place Chief Arredondo on administrative leave effective on this date.”

Parents in the community have been calling for Arredondo’s removal as Uvalde schools police chief after he made officers wait nearly 80 minutes before engaging the shooter.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw stated, “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.”

He continued, “The only thing stopping the hallway of dedicated officers from entering rooms 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.”

“There’s compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary was an abject failure and antithetical to everything we’ve learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre,” said DPS Director McCraw in his testimony to a Texas Senate committee Tuesday, Rolling Stone reports.

He also alleged that the shooter, Salvador Ramos, could have been subdued within three minutes had there been a proper response.