Robb Elementary, where the deadliest school massacre in Texas history occurred, is set to be demolished next month, according to the Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin.
On May 24, an 18-year-old gunman entered the school and murdered 19 children and two teachers.
McLaughlin said in a council meeting on Tuesday, “You could never ask a child to go back or a teacher to go back to that school. Ever.”
The mayor did not specify when the demolition will begin.
It would not be the first school destroyed after a deadly shooting.
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was torn down and rebuilt after a 20-year-old gunman shot and killed 20 students and six staff members in 2012.
Also in the meeting on Tuesday, McLaughlin highlighted the difficulty in collecting information from those investigating the shooting and the highly criticized police response.
“The gloves are off,” he said. “As we know (information about the investigation), we will share it. We are not going to hold back anymore. We kept quiet at the request (of other agencies) because we thought we were doing a formal investigation and doing the right thing.”
McLaughlin was critical of Col. Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS).
He expressed his displeasure over the fact that he and other city officials had not received an update on the status of the investigation, which is being handled by the Texas Rangers, a DPS agency.
McLaughlin continued by saying that, in his opinion, McCraw intentionally misrepresented the facts to discredit the actions of the Texas Rangers and state troopers who responded to the incident.
“Colonel McCraw has continued to, whether you want to call it … lie, leak, mislead, or mistake information in order to distance his own troopers and Rangers from the response,” said McLaughlin. “Every briefing, he leaves out the number of his own officers and Rangers that were on scene that day.”
On Tuesday, the Texas Senate Special Committee to Protect All Texans heard McCraw’s testimony on what happened on the day of the shooting as he called law enforcement’s response to the deadly event an “abject failure,” The Dallas Express reports.