Lawmaker Shares Sickening Detail of Texas School Shooting

Uvalde gunman wrote 'LOL' in victims' blood
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 20, 2023 6:15 AM CDT
Lawmaker: Uvalde Shooter Wrote 'LOL' in Victims' Blood
Twenty-one empty chairs are seen outside of a daycare center as a memorial for the victims killed in the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Friday, May 27, 2022.   (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

Family members of the children and teachers massacred at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last year gasped and cried Tuesday when a state lawmaker disclosed a grim detail. State Rep. Joe Moody said the 18-year-old gunman used his victims' blood to write a message on a fourth-grade classroom whiteboard, NBC reports. "The attacker scooped up the blood of his victims and smeared it into a disgusting message there," Moody said. "What he wrote in innocent blood right next to that 'lovebirds' banner was the phrase 'LOL.' Laughing out loud." Moody, speaking at a hearing on a bill to raise the age to buy a semiautomatic rifle from 18 to 21, said the detail had not been publicly shared before, reports BuzzFeed.

"His message to us wasn't anger or hatred. It was something flippant," the Democratic lawmaker said of the Robb Elementary School shooter, who killed 19 children and two teachers. "He celebrated that he could do what he did. That's his critique of us, because we let this happen." The state House committee hearing lasted until 3am and adjourned without a vote. Some parents waited more than 12 hours to testify, the AP reports. "Did you think we would go home?” asked Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose daughter, Lexi, was killed in the shooting. She asked lawmakers: "Did you look at images of children running for their lives, and think, ‘What if we had enacted stricter gun laws?"

Javier Cazare, whose daughter, Jacklyn, was killed, said, "My daughter tried to buy Super Glue at Walmart the other day and was flagged as being under 18 … What’s wrong with this picture?" The bill was introduced by Democratic state Rep. Tracy King, who represents Uvalde. He said he would probably have voted against it in earlier years, but the shooting on May 24 last year "changed everything," NBC reports.

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Opponents of the bill also testified, including Stephen Willeford, who used his own rifle to confront the gunman in the 2017 Sutherland Springs mass shooting. "If you think he couldn’t have found a gun other ways or waited until he was 21 to do his murder spree, you are wrong," he said of the Uvalde gunman, who bought the AR-15-style rifle used in the shooting six days after his 18th birthday. (More Uvalde mass shooting stories.)

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