Uvalde, Texas: Another Community Forced to Cope With a School Shooting

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Today, we were supposed to have our one-day spring membership drive in an experiment and squashing our typical nine-day drive in May down to one day, but aiming for the same total contributions, but obviously, we're not going to do that today. It would have been inappropriate given Texas and beyond that none of us are in the mood now, so we're delaying that. Instead, we will devote our full program this morning to coverage and conversations about this horrific tragedy, yet another one like this, and what to do about them.

We will talk about guns, of course. Everybody knows whether they want to admit it or not, that a big glaring difference between this country and any other country is the easy availability of guns. We will talk about other things too. On this easy availability of guns, people say it as a generality, but I'm going to give you some statistics. According to a statistics page on the BBC website, the US has 120 firearms per 100 residents. In other words, 20% more guns than people in this country, and that's up in recent years from 88 per 100 so a little less than a gun per person, as recently as 2011.

10 years ago, we did not have more guns per person than people, now we do. Gun possession is becoming more common in this country, not less, despite all the gun violence. Our rate of gun ownership far surpasses that of any other country around the world. We are truly unique in this respect. Again, by the numbers, the next closest, according to the BBC, is Yemen, a country in a civil war, and they only have 55 guns per 100 residents when we have 120.

In the year 2020, the last year that complete data is available for, there were 38,355 deaths by firearms in this country. Now there are 365 days in the year 38,000 deaths, the math is pretty easy there. A little more than 100 gun deaths every day in this country. Of those 38,000 gun deaths around 24,000, were suicides. Most were suicides. We've talked about this before, but a lot of people don't realize this. It's a lot easier to kill yourself with a gun than any other way. Public health people talk about suicides on the rise in this country, maybe they track the rise in gun ownership.

In conjunction with that, I don't know, but I wonder how many fewer successful suicide attempts there would be without the unique proliferation of guns here. Around 14,000 of those 38,000 gun deaths were homicides. About 1,300 of the gun deaths, most of the rest were accidents or other incidents.

Now, of all the murders in the United States, the vast majority around 80% are with a gun. In the UK, just 4% of murders are committed with a gun. That affects the overall homicide rates too. Guns are so prevalent. In the US around 5 people per 100,000 are murdered, in the UK only around 1 per 100,000. Those are some actual numbers on the uniqueness of the United States on guns, American exceptionalism lives in this area.

On the day after another 18-year-old teenager with an apparently legal assault weapon committed yet another mass killing, at last count 19 children and 2 adults. There are other things to talk about too. Other patterns that recur and recur and these things that we can discuss, should discuss, must discuss to potentially find preventive measures. Like there's a pattern here where the gunman-- It's almost invariably a gunman, not a gun woman. A pattern where the gunman shoots a woman in his private life before he goes out and does his big public thing.

This 18-year-old in Texas, the news reports say shot his grandmother and then went to the school. Adam Lanza, the Newtown Connecticut school shooter 10 years ago this year, killed his mother and then went to Sandy Hook Elementary School. Remember the assassination of New York City police officers Ramos and Liu in 2014? The guy who did that shot his girlfriend in Baltimore, then came to New York to find police officers to shoot at random. Why did all these things go like that? We'll ask the guests later in the show.

Yes, we can talk about the best practices, and we must for protecting the school buildings, and yes, we can talk about the cultural and economic contexts of gun violence, including mass shootings and individual ones. We want to begin by respecting the victims of yesterday's shooting. The place where this happened, it's so different than the New York metropolitan area where the show comes from and where most of you are.

Uvalde, Texas has a population of only around 15,000 people, according to the 2020 census. The population is around 80% Latino and around 20% White, and that's it. Less than 1% of the population there is Black or Asian American or Native American. It's near San Antonio, near the Mexican border. The New York Times suggests a very stable community. With this stat, listen to this, in the neighborhood around Robb Elementary School where the shooting took place, more than 40% of residents have lived in the same house for at least 30 years, according to the census bureau, as cited in The Times.

Let's pay some respects to the victims, and just get to know some things about this small city that will never be the same before we get into any politics or anything else later in the show. Our first guest today is Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, politics and government reporter for the Texas Newsroom, a public radio program in Texas, to discuss the Uvalde shooting and the people in the town. Welcome to WNYC, Sergio, and thanks for giving us some time on what must be both a horrible and extremely busy day. Hello from New York.

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us just a little bit more about the Texas Newsroom. I'm not actually sure. Is that a show? Is that a news organization? What's your context?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Yes. Great question. It's a collaboration between NPR and public radio stations in Texas, particularly the big radio stations like KERA in Dallas, Texas Public Radio in San Antonio, QUT in Austin, and Houston Public Media. We're here pretty much elevating the stories of the local stations and also making sure we have a cohesive newsroom.

Brian Lehrer: Great. Thanks for that context. Mostly on this segment, as I said earlier in the intro, we don't want to do politics, we don't want to talk about the shooter, we want to let our listeners up here, just to know a little bit more about the community where this happened and create a space where our listeners can live with the empathy and sympathy that I know they are feeling for the victims and their loved ones in a community far from our own. Tell us more about Uvalde, Texas. First, can you locate it more precisely on a map for us? Where is it and what's around it?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Yes, absolutely. Uvalde, Texas is about 83 miles west of San Antonio. That's about an hour and 30 minutes if there's no traffic. It is a small community, it's about 16,000, 18,000 people. The majority of the residents are Hispanic. It's also a particularly young population, there's a lot of children. When we talk about these Hispanic families, we're talking about folks who, it's a mix. There have been there for decades. We also have some folks who are newcomers whose main language is Spanish at times, but it's a tight-knit community.

Everyone knows each other and Brian, it's very touching to see the social media, people paying their respects to their loved ones, and then when you go into the comment sections, a lot of people replying, "Hey, I knew this person." "That teacher actually taught me," or, "Hey, that person was my cousin." We're seeing that this community is very united and very loving towards each other, which makes this tragedy even worse in a way.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. What's the economy based on there? What do people tend to do for a living?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Yes. Blue-collar workers. That's what we're seeing. Again, a lot of these people are immigrants. I think that's also an important point here because we have been hearing from parents, and we've seen news reports of parents saying that they left their jobs right away as they learned about the shooting in the school. Many of them, you could see them they were coming straight from working in the farmlands and then in construction. It's a very hard-working community as well.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can open up the phones for your expressions of sympathy or grief or anything you want to say or ask our guests about Uvalde, Texas or Robb Elementary School or any of the families or individuals involved. 212-433 WNYC. 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Do we happen to have anyone listening who's from around there or ever spend some time around there? We're just trying to identify with the victims before we go on to any politics or law enforcement or shooter profiles or anything later in the show.

The phones are open for questions or thoughts or expressions of sympathy or shrieks of anguish with the victims and the city of Uvalde in mind, 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer with Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, politics and government reporter for the Texas newsroom that consortium of public radio stations and reporters that he was describing at the beginning.

I was reading that stat or I read on the air, in the intro that stat about how long, how many people near the school have lived there. That makes it sound like a very stable community, not that much coming and going maybe even though it's a border town. New York City where I am, which is a hub for immigrants, of course, has for centuries had huge numbers of people coming in all the time and huge numbers of people leaving all the time. Uvalde even though it's near the border less so.

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Yes, even if it's near the border, it's less so. Actually, it's interesting because Uvalde is almost the same distance from San Antonio than from the Mexico border of Piedras Negras. A lot of people call it a border town and yes it is technically a border town, but truly it's a community in the middle of these two very diverse towns as well, like San Antonio, and Piedras Negras. That's why we're seeing a lot of the influence in this community and a lot of people going from those places into it.

Brian Lehrer: I see there's a customs and border patrol station there. Is it an immigration law enforcement hub in terms of detaining people coming across undocumented or illegally, is there a lot of that there?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Yes, in a way. A few months ago we heard from the mayor of Uvalde who had said that Uvalde has become this place where migrants who are apprehended at the border and later released pending their court cases and their court proceedings have been released in Uvalde. One of the things the mayor has said too is that Uvalde doesn't have the infrastructure to attend to this influx of folks, of migrants.

They have a hospital, but they don't have a homeless shelter. I think there's only one bus that goes from Uvalde to San Antonio once or twice a day. It is a town that is small and according to the mayor doesn't have the infrastructure to serve the many people that are coming in.

Brian Lehrer: Do you know, even more specifically who the families with kids at the school are demographically speaking or economically or anything else? If it's a neighborhood elementary school, then the people there may even be more similar to each other than people in the community as a whole.

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Right. We know that the school serves students in the second, third, and fourth grades. Right there, there is a lot of similarity with the victims. One of the things that-- I have to be honest with you Brian, I don't feel comfortable when necessarily naming them yet because we still need some confirmation.

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: From what we've seen there is a lot of victims who are Hispanic. We've seen reports that many of the victims received awards hours before the shooting for good grades. These are good kids, good communities, and good parents who are working hard and were working hard to give their kids a better future. We've seen reports that many of them celebrated with their kids hours before the shooting and then this tragedy happened.

I get a little emotional talking about it because it's really hard to fathom that.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I don't know if you are a parent yourself, but as a parent, I noticed to bond as a community with other parents from your kids' elementary school class. I can't even imagine what those families are going through now. Of course, this changes their lives forever. I don't know if it makes it any easier or harder to be experiencing this as a group with your friends who also lost their kids. I saw a report about horrific procedures for identifying the victims, including that they were taking DNA samples from parents to help with positive IDs. I can't imagine it makes my heart want to explode as well as my head. Does that mean some of the children weren't recognizable?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: I think one could assume that law enforcement agencies have been very short when talking about this tragedy. I think they're coming from this position that there's still a lot of information that needs to come out and also because of the magnitude. Again, we're talking about 19 children so far, and we're talking about two adults, at least one of them was a teacher. There are a lot of people they have to notify to let them know about their loved ones.

Yesterday, as you mentioned, we learned about how some parents had to go in and get a DNA swab so that could help identify their kids. 12 hours, 13 hours after the shooting, we saw reports of parents outside of the school, outside of the police office, outside of the reunification center telling reporters, "Hey, I haven't heard anything about my kid. No one is telling me anything about my kid." I think a lot of them are really hoping that potentially their kid ran away and it's safe because we know that if that's not the case, it is a tragedy that's the parents' worst nightmare.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call from a listener in Midwood Brooklyn. Amanda you're on WNYC, thank you for calling in.

Amanda: Yes, of course. I'm just so saddened by this because it reminds me how numbed we are to tragedy and violent death. For me as a New Yorker, I've lost three family members to traffic violence, and the solutions that a portfolio just remind me of what we face with gun violence and how misplaced those suggestions are. For cycling advocates, we hear things like, "Oh, it's reckless cyclists or people don't look the right way," when really it's reckless driving. The same thing with some solutions for gun violence like we should arm teachers. I am an art teacher. I am so ill-equipped to handle anything like that. It really saddens me.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Amanda. Thanks for that. One of the stats that I saw Sergio, on TV was that I guess this isn't really a stat, but it's a comparison since she brought up traffic deaths, that it's easier to own a gun in Texas than it is to own a car. I think that's right?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Yes. Last year, and I know we don't want to talk too much about politics here, but I think it's important to mention this last year, Governor Greg Abbot signed a bill that pretty much allowed most Texans to purchase a gun without a license or a permit. Of course, if you ask some of the supporters of that law, they say having a license law in place probably would've not prevented this. The reality is that we don't know, because what we know is that right now it seems like this gunman bought a gun, a firearm, and he was just 18 years old. This is what we know.

I think that to something that Amanda mentioned-- First, I want to say, I'm sorry to hear what happened to her loved ones, but a lot of people are getting tired of this. A lot of people really want the state to act because the reality is that Texas has seen a lot of shootings. In 2019, there was a mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. That gunman killed 23 people and injured 23 others. This was in 2019.

A few days ago we saw what happened in Buffalo. I think people are starting to feel more and more fed up about this, about the fact that this continues to happen. Now, arming teachers, which is something that Amanda mentioned, that's something that Republicans in Texas have mentioned. I believe Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who is a prominent Republican member, he talked about how he thinks maybe part of the solution should be ensuring that teachers are equipped with firearms and that there are potentially more law enforcement officers in the schools.

Some folks say, "Hey, that's not going to prevent this from happening, we just have to tackle two things, gun safety laws and also address mental health issues that are affecting community members in the state."

Brian Lehrer: Yes. We will get more into the politics later in the program. I see that they're beginning to identify victims individually. I heard you a moment ago and you said you don't want to get into names at all yet because you don't have confirmations and stuff. They've been appropriately slow in releasing any names because there's so much of notifying the relatives and other loved ones to do first, which is the only appropriate way to do it.

I did read one thing this morning that I only saw in one place. You tell me if you can confirm it, that all the 19 children who were counted as killed were in the same class, did you see that?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Yes. Right before your show started we heard an interview that a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety gave to a network and in that interview, with The Today's Show, he did mention that the shooter did get into a classroom. He barricaded himself in a classroom and began shooting the children and teachers in that room.

Brian Lehrer: Did any students in that classroom survive?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: It's unclear. The law enforcement agencies and DPS have not talked about that yet. Yes, they haven't talked about that yet.

Brian Lehrer: If they were all in the same class, what grade was this, do you know that?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: No, we also don't know that information yet. We do know I believe one of the teachers that was killed was a fourth-grade teacher. It might have been a fourth-grade classroom, but we haven't been able to confirm that yet. We also do know that according to law enforcement agents, state troopers, and local law enforcement when they saw that the gunman was barricading himself, they started breaking windows in the schools to evacuate children and teachers.

Brian Lehrer: I read that the shooter did go to Uvalde High School. Do you know if that's true and do you know if he went to that elementary school?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: We don't know if he went to the elementary school, but we do know he did go to a high school in the school district, presumably Uvalde High School. Now, one of the things that the law enforcement agents are trying to do besides helping identify victims and reunifying those parents with their kids is that they're really trying to find a motive. One of the things in this case, in this shooting, is that we don't have a motive yet or at least it hasn't been made publicly.

We do know that law enforcement agents are checking social media, they're talking to family members of this suspect, they're also interviewing friends and trying to figure out more about this 18-year-old man. We also do know and this might be a little hard to swallow point, but we do know that the shooter was involved in a domestic disturbance with his grandmother prior to the shooting. Actually one of the things that you mentioned at the intro of the show is that he shot his grandmother and then fled the scene.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Do you know if she survived?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Last time we heard we believe she was in critical condition, but we cannot confirm that yet.

Brian Lehrer: Because I'm sure listeners are wondering after Buffalo, there doesn't seem to be a racial motivation here or White Supremacy thing or anything like that targeting Latinos, anything like that. Because I think he was Latino, the students were overwhelmingly Latino. There doesn't seem to be anything like Buffalo here, right?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: We don't know. I don't think it seems that way, but also again law enforcement agents have not been able to find a motive yet or release that motive. One of the points here too is that I think right now law enforcement agencies are also trying to figure out if it was his intention to go into the school and shoot kids. The reason I say that, Brian is because like I mentioned the shooter was involved in this domestic disturbance, he shot his grandmother, and he fled.

Uvalde Police Department, they received a call about a crash and an individual with a weapon making his way into the school. This crash was the shooter. He crashed into a ditch, then he walks out of his vehicle with a weapon. Uvalde Police Department starts receiving calls and so state troopers and local law enforcement, they tried to engage with the suspect, but to no avail, because the suspect was able to go inside the school building.

When the state troopers trIED to get inside the building as well as inside the school, they were met with shots fired from the suspect. It's unclear at this point whether the shooter went into the school and started shooting kids, because of this situation if that makes sense. We're still trying to learn more about this, but what the spokesman with DPS says is that because this gunman is alleged to have a rifle. He had a rifle when he went in, a long rifle then DPS is saying that might show the intent of the shooter.

Brian Lehrer: Let me take another phone call for you. We have a few minutes left with Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, politics and government reporter for the Public Radio Group, the Texas Newsroom. He's in Austin. You're in Austin, right?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Correct.

Brian Lehrer: As we talk about the school shooting in Uvalde Texas. Sharon in Queens you are on WNYC. Hi Sharon?

Sharon: Hi, I am a New Yorker. My daughter is a principal at a school and my granddaughter goes to the school with her. This morning I prayed with them before they left. If you knew the protocols that administrators have to go through to protect children in a school building, you would be amazed. It is so hard to protect children in a building and not give them the traumatized feeling of being unsafe. My daughter has protocols in place for people that are parents that seem a little bit off, that they have to meet their kids two blocks away.

I'm concerned about the long-term effects of the schoolmates. We have to put something in place for them to have some psychological counseling, because looking at my five-year-old granddaughter this morning, I just could not phantom the loss and the town being such a close-knit community, unlike New York City that everybody knows each other, so it's affecting everybody whether it's your child or not.

Brian Lehrer: That's right.

Sharon: I'm just saying, God, bless those people, I'm praying very hard. As mums, because I'm a mum. When mums get up in the Senate and do something, that's when they're going to do something about this craziness. It's just like mothers against drunk driving. Mothers against drunk driving is a force to reckon with and we might have to do the same thing with guns. God bless you so much.

Brian Lehrer: You too, Sharon, thank you very much for your call. We've had a couple of wonderful calls here, Sergio from New Yorkers who really just wanted to express their sympathies, which is what we asked for in this segment. There's plenty of time in this show later to do politics, to do cultural analysis, to do all this stuff. We're just spending time with you getting to know Uvalde, Texas, getting to know some of the people who have had to live or die through this, and those who will have to live with it in the future.

Not surprisingly our listeners are showing up with their sympathies and their condolences. Here's one thing that a listener tweets, "It's high time to broadcast video and photographs of the crime victims in [unintelligible 00:29:18] so that Americans can actually see the effects of a massacre of children with high capacity automatic firearms designed for warfare."

That's one listener's opinion. Sergio, how do you handle that? You like me just do radio, so you don't have pictures to decide whether to show or not to show. How about even how graphic some sound might be in an audio news report after something like this? Have you ever been in a position to have to make that judgment call?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Not necessarily with shootings, but with other incidents. I think one of the things certainly folks in my newsroom, my editors, and in other newsrooms that I worked for, we always think about this idea of maximizing the truth but minimizing the harm. I worry at times that broadcasting a lot of this sound, and videos would keep the truth a status quo, but maximize the harm to the victims, to the families, to the brothers and sisters of these victims. It is a judgment call that we make often.

I think that the listener who tweeted has a good point. It also sounds like a lot of the responsibility is on the media to make sure that we broadcast all this. I think that the responsibility is also individually, right? There's so much we can broadcast, and there's so much we can report about that would move people to do something, or compel people to do something with this shooting, with other situations.

I think it's also a lot about personal responsibility. We've also seen that there are people that have had an idea of guns and gun safety before a shooting, and then when it hits them, when it's a family member, then they change course, and their idea, and their perspective changes. One thing I want to say, Brian, is that as reporters in this country, we cover a lot of shootings, and this is not the first mass shooting I've covered. Unfortunately, it certainly won't be the last one. One of the things that community members in other shootings, and in other communities say to reporters often and have certainly said to me is, "Do not forget about us."

We're doing this show today, we go in there, we talk to the communities for the first two weeks, and then we forget about them, or maybe the next school shooting or the next mass shooting happens and then that takes over the news cycle, and then we forget about Buffalo, and we forget about Uvalde. I think if there's something your listeners can do, is certainly pray for this community, but also not forget about them. I think that we are reporting on it right now, but these folks their future is different from what their past has been. Now they don't have their kids, now they don't have their cousins, they don't have their teacher. How does the community move forward? We have to keep that in mind.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. The last question I'll ask you, and then I'll let you go back to your real job. I really appreciate you giving our station so far out of time, and our listener community so far out of town, I should say so much time this morning when you're in the middle of this. I saw the school superintendent in Uvalde say this ends the school year there, they will not return. What do those families do now to the point you were just making? How is the town providing for their mental health or anything else? I'm sure they're even just starting to figure that out, but what do they do if the rest of the school year is canceled?

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Right. We don't know. We do know that some local lawmakers have been on Twitter asking mental health providers, and experts to come to Uvalde, and help the community, then help the kids, and the parents. The state and the local government are also providing crisis counselors at those reunification centers. Yes, the school year is over. One of the things that the superintendent said too is that he's heartbroken. Yesterday in a press conference, he broke down talking about this. How does the community move forward? That's a huge question that as someone who has not experienced this, I cannot respond. I think that we're going to be paying attention to it. Again, we need to remember them and we need to remember the victims, we need to remember those who survived this shooting, and try to provide as much help and assistance as possible so they can continue their lives somehow,

Brian Lehrer: Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, politics and government reporter for the Texas Newsroom. Thank you so much for your time and thoughtfulness today. We really, really appreciate it.

Sergio Martínez-Beltrán: Of course.

 

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