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 earlier 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 The Texas Tribune.

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State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district includes Uvalde, said President Biden, who visited the city on 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.