Port Washington Students Walk Out To Demand Stricter Gun Laws: ICYMI

Editor's note: This article was originally published on Thursday, May 26, 2022.

PORT WASHINGTON, NY — Hundreds of students from Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School walked out of class Thursday to join a nationwide protest calling for stronger gun control laws in the wake of the deadly Uvalde, Texas, school shooting.

Students stood in silence at 12 p.m. in honor of the 19 schoolchildren and two teachers who died in this week's rampage.

"How can this keep happening? We have to do something else," Gaia Dash, a junior at the school, told News 12. "This can't just be another thoughts and prayers situation."

Around 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos crashed his grandmother's truck outside Robb Elementary School and jumped out carrying an AR-15-style rifle.

Authorities in Texas said he entered through a back door on the west side of the building and made his way through a couple of short hallways to a classroom, where he fired "more than 25" rounds.

SEE ALSO:

• Salvador Ramos Warned On Facebook About Texas School Shooting: Abbott
• Texas School Shooting: What We Know About Uvalde Victims
• O'Rourke Interrupts Texas Shooting Press Conference: 'This Is On You'

Police for the city of Uvalde and the Uvalde school district entered the school at 11:44 a.m. and exchanged gunfire with Ramos, who barricaded himself in the classroom.

Approximately an hour later, a tactical team of Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement forced their way into the classroom and exchanged gunfire with Ramos, killing him.

Officials are still investigating the timeline of the shooting, which began when Ramos shot his grandmother in the face before driving to the school. The grandmother, 66, is now stable at University Hospital in San Antonio, officials said.

Tuesday's massacre in Uvalde is the second-deadliest school shooting on record in the U.S., only behind the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 26 people dead.

Patch's Jeffrey Perkins contributed to this report.