'The agonized screams of family members are audible from the parking lot' as parents of the Texas school shooting victims discovered their children had been killed: report

• A reporter said parents at Robb Elementary School could be heard screaming from the parking lot.
• Austin-American Statesman reporter Niki Griswold described the sounds as "agonized screams."

"The agonized screams of family members are audible from the parking lot."

That's how a reporter covering the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, described the scene on Tuesday night.

In a series of tweets, Niki Griswold, a journalist with Austin-American Statesman, described the anguish at the Uvalde Civic Center, which is serving as a reunification site for families impacted by the shooting.

"A family has erupted into sobs outside the civic center," she said.

The scene was reminiscent of ones that took place after Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, noted New York Times reporter Maggie Astor in a tweet.

"After Sandy Hook, I read about how the group of parents waiting in a firehouse had dwindled until finally they were told that if they were still there, their children were dead. The reporters wrote that the screaming could be heard from the street. I will never forget that," she wrote.

A 2012 CNN article described how "frantic parents" had flocked to the Sandy Hook firehouse. "Why? Why?" one woman wailed as she walked up the road from the school.

The Robb Elementary School shooting is the deadliest elementary school mass shooting since Sandy Hook, which left 27 people dead in Newtown, Connecticut. Each of the 20 child victims was aged 6 and 7.

Late Tuesday night, Griswold tweeted that families in Uvalde were still "waiting for any news about their children." "It's getting dark," she said.

"I spoke to one man who says he's been waiting for news about his niece for hours. Heart is so heavy," she added.

In another update, she wrote: "Many families are still waiting for news, hoping to be told that their child is in the hospital, either in Uvalde or San Antonio. The alternative is their worst nightmare."