Robb Elementary School, the site of a massacre, will be demolished, Uvalde mayor says
Robb Elementary School, the Uvalde, Texas, school where 19 children and two teachers were killed May 24 in a deadly massacre, will be demolished, according to the city's mayor.
Mayor Don McLaughlin, at a Uvalde City Council meeting Tuesday, said officials planned to raze the building. “My understanding – and I had this discussion with the superintendent – that school will be demolished,” McLaughlin said, multiple news outlets reported.
McLaughlin did not offer a timeline for its destruction, Reuters reported. “You can never ask a child to go back or a teacher to go back in that school ever,” he said.
District Superintendent Hal Harrell said this month that the 550 students who attended Robb Elementary would be relocated this fall to two other elementary schools in Uvalde, according to The Texas Tribune.
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State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district includes Uvalde, said President Joe Biden, who visited the city May 29, told him that “we’re going to look to raze that school and build a new one," KSAT 12, an ABC affiliate in San Antonio, Texas, reported.
This isn't the first time a school has been torn down after a massacre. Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and six adults were killed in December 2012, was demolished the following year.
Also on Wednesday, Gutierrez sued the Texas Department of Public Safety, seeking official law enforcement records related to the Robb Elementary shooting, according to The Austin American-Statesman, part of the USA TODAY Network.
After previously seeking ballistics reports and documents, Gutierrez argued in his lawsuit that the agency did not provide the documents, or seek an attorney general's opinion about withholding them, within 10 business days as required under state law. As a result, the lawsuit argues, the agency is required to provide the documents.
"The State of Texas failed these families, and those families deserve to know the complete, unalterable truth about what happened that day," the lawsuit said.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Uvalde school to be demolished: Mayor reveals fate of Robb Elementary