‘Terror on repeat’: What a national project says about the AR-15′s carnage in Texas

They are horrors previously only described by the survivors of some of Texas’ darkest days: “LOL” written on an elementary school whiteboard in blood. Church pews ravaged by bullets. Hallways lined with body bags. Red everywhere.

In “Terror on Repeat,” the latest installment in a series that aims to examine the role of the AR-15 in American life, The Washington Post published Thursday never-before-seen photographs, videos and firsthand accounts from the immediate aftermaths of several of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings, including Texas massacres in Allen, Uvalde and Sutherland Springs.

Without them, The Post’s Executive Editor Sally Buzbee wrote in a column preceding the story, the public cannot grasp the “full scope of an AR-15′s destructive power or the extent of the trauma inflicted on victims, survivors and first responders.”

“The AR-15 has soared in popularity over the past two decades and is now the gun used more than any other in the country’s deadliest mass shootings,” Buzbee wrote. “In the end, we decided that there is public value in illuminating the profound and repeated devastation left by tragedies that are often covered as isolated news events but rarely considered as part of a broader pattern of violence.”

The story does not include photos from this year’s mass shooting in Allen, where, on May 6, a gunman opened fire outside Allen Premium Outlets, killing eight people; among them three children, two parents, a beloved brother, a heroic security guard and an engineer.

Instead, The Post shared the moments the lives of an outlet mall shopper and employee were split into before and after — or what Buzbee called, the “sudden transition from normal life to terror.”

“The face my wife made the moment we heard shots and she started to run with the stroller … super tense — I don’t know how to describe it,” Daniel Seijas, who was shopping at Allen Premium Outlets when the gunfire rang out, told the newspaper.

“They came, these three police officers with long guns,” said Marcus Kergosien, a store manager. “I was instructed to unlock the door and to raise my hands and we all came out at gunpoint and were evacuated.”

Allen, too, was once the face of a national debate similar to what The Post’s story has reignited. After the shooting, witnesses posted gruesome photos on social media, including one of several bodies piled up outside the outlet mall, and a child who appeared to have been shot in the head.

The images and videos circulated far faster than they could be taken down. The brother of one of the victims, Elio Cumana-Rivas, told The Dallas Morning News he pored over them, searching for Elio in the carnage.

“We found that Twitter users were reporting they were being inundated with graphic photos and videos in the aftermath of the shooting, within trending topics, ‘for you’ tabs and in their search results,” Kayla Gogarty, a deputy research director at Media Matters for America, said then.

When the release of body-worn camera footage was in question earlier this year, relatives of other Allen victims said publicizing graphic imagery would be “an invasion of privacy” and asked officials not to show their loved ones “on the worst day of their lives.” In the 5½-minute footage authorities went on to release in June, the bodies of the victims and the gunman were blurred.

In the days leading up to publication, Buzbee said The Post provided notice to many families of victims, their representatives and community leaders to give them the opportunity to avoid the coverage if desired.

In anticipation, the parents of some Uvalde victims took to social media earlier this week and asked the public not to share the article.

“Please, please do not share the Washington Post,” Kimberly Garcia, the mother of 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, said on X, formerly known as Twitter. Amerie was killed in the May 24, 2022, shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, alongside two teachers and 18 other children.

“My daughter being taken from this world wasn’t fair to begin with, it’s not fair how she was taken either. Amerie, her classmates, & her teachers don’t deserve this.”

In place of the story, Garcia asked her followers to center the victims by sharing photos of them in happier times. In an Instagram post early Thursday, Uvalde parents shared their own pictures in a slideshow captioned “This is how we choose to remember our loved ones.”

Brett Cross, father of another Uvalde victim, 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, disagreed.

“I know that we post photos of Uziyah smiling and happy — that’s who he was in life,” Cross wrote in a statement. “But that’s not who he was in his final moments.”

Cross said he “firmly believes” The Post did not publish the photos for shock value or clickbait, but rather as a warning.

“A warning to our nation that if we do not stand together, put our foot down and demand our government do something, then it will be your loved ones’ body in that bag,” he said. “Your loved ones’ blood smeared from being dragged out. Your loved ones’ funeral.”

“So view the article. Breathe it in. Smell the gunfire. See the destruction. See the pain.”

Several of the more than two dozen images included in the story are crime scene photos from Uvalde, their classrooms frozen in time. Flowers, bubble wands and paper airplanes sit on the children’s desks. Two backpacks hang on hooks above pools of blood coating papers, dry erase markers and glue sticks that had been strewn across the floor. A rifle lays on top of school supplies.

In another photo, white body bags in a hallway-turned-triage-center lay under other signs of life, like a poster that read “Flip Flop into Summer!” It was Robb Elementary’s last week of class before summer break.

Other images show weapons and their destruction in mass shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pa.; the Oregon Historic District in Dayton, Ohio; the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas, Nev.; and the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colo.

“You can only imagine that gun being pointed down and shooting as much as you can into a body, what it would do,” said Rusty Duncan, a volunteer firefighter who responded to the shooting that killed 26 people in Sutherland Springs in 2017. “It’ll make you unrecognizable in a heartbeat.

“So, yes, I believe it, because I saw it with my own eyes.”