Uvalde, Texas school shooting: What do we know about the gunman and his family?
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Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting
A gunman killed at least 20 people — 19 students and a teacher — at an elementary school in Uvalde on Tuesday and also killed his grandmother, according to Texas officials. The gunman is dead as well.
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The man who killed 19 students and two teachers after opening fire at an elementary school in Southwest Texas on Tuesday was described as a quiet loner — whose family was in the dark about the semi-automatic AR-15 style rifles he purchased days after turning 18, according to multiple news reports.
Salvador Rolando Ramos, of Uvalde, was fatally shot by an Uvalde County sheriff’s deputy after he shut himself in a fourth-grade classroom at Robb Elementary School, which is located in his hometown. Ramos reportedly was inside the school for more than an hour before he was killed.
Seventeen people were also injured in the attack.
Ramos was a United States citizen and a student at Uvalde High School, according to Gov. Greg Abbott. He was not transgender, as many are claiming in viral social media posts and clickbait fake news links.
Uvalde school district police chief Pete Arredondo also said the gunman acted alone.
“When parents drop their kids off at school, they have every expectation to know they’re going to be able to pick their child up when that school day ends,” Abbott said. “There are families who are in mourning right now, and the State of Texas is in mourning with them for the reality that these parents are not going to be able to pick up their children.”
What guns did the shooter use?
Ramos had two AR-style rifles, law enforcement sources said.
According to AP, Ramos legally bought two rifles last week, just after his 18th birthday.
He bought one of the guns from a federally licensed dealer in the Uvalde area on May 17, according to Sen. John Whitmire. The day after, Ramos bought 375 rounds of ammunition and purchased the second rifle on May 20.
According to AP reports, officers found one of the rifles in Ramos’ truck and the other rifle in the school. He wore a tactical vest and dropped a backpack containing several magazines full of ammunition near the school entrance.
What is believed to be the shooter’s Instagram account, but has not been publicly verified by authorities, was taken down. There were photos of guns on the profile, and the account followed other students at the high school.
According to CNN, multiple classmates confirmed the account belonged to Ramos.
One screenshot published by online news site Heavy from the account shows two rifles and another shows someone, possibly Ramos, holding a rifle magazine.
An unaware family
Multiple family members told news outlets that they had no idea the 18-year-old purchased the firearms.
In an interview with ABC News, Ramos’ mother, Adriana Reyes, said that she was unaware that he bought the guns earlier this month, adding that her son “was not a monster,” but struggled with anger.
“He can be aggressive... If he really got mad,” Reyes told ABC News. “We all have a rage, that some people have it more than others.”
ABC also reported that the 18-year-old had begun living with his grandparents after a fight with his mother about disconnecting the internet.
Ramos’ grandfather told AP that he also didn’t know that his grandson had purchased the guns.
“I don’t like weapons. I cannot be around weapons,” Relando Reyes, 72, said. “I hate when I see all the news, all those people that get shot.”
Reyes, who said he had a criminal background and isn’t permitted to have a weapon at home, also told ABC he would have reported the guns if he had known about them.
Ramos shot his grandmother before going to the school, according to Abbott.
It was initially reported that Ramos killed his grandmother, but the Texas Department of Public Safety said Thursday the grandmother is alive and in stable condition.
According to state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who said he had been briefed by state police, Ramos then went to the school about 11:30 a.m. with two military-style weapons he had purchased shortly after his birthday.
“That was the first thing he did on his 18th birthday,” Gutierrez told the AP.
Ramos had hinted on social media that an attack could be coming, according to Gutierrez. He noted that the gunman “suggested the kids should watch out.”
Warning signs
After posting photos of his guns earlier in the week, CNN said that the 18-year-old tagged an Instagram account in one of the posts.
The user, who has not been publicly identified, told CNN that she didn’t know Ramos, did not live in Texas and he had messaged her randomly.
“In one [screenshot], Ramos wrote ‘I’m about to’ -- but didn’t say what he would do. ‘I got a lil secret,’ he wrote in another message. ‘I wanna tell u.’ She responded she might take a nap soon but would respond if she was awake,” CNN reported.
“the only reason i responded to him was because i was afraid of him i wish i stayed awake to at least try to convince him to not commit his crime,” the user wrote on an Instagram story obtained by CNN. “I didnt know.”
Another girl, from Frankfurt, Germany, said that she was online-friends with Ramos, FaceTiming the 18-year-old regularly. The two had met on a social media app.
“He looked happy and comfortable talking to me,” the girl said to CNN, adding that the 18-year-old told her he spent a lot of time alone at home.
“There were other text messages, however, that alarmed her. In one case, she said, he told her that he ‘threw dead cats at people’s houses’,” CNN reported.
About 30 minutes prior to the shooting, Ramos also took to Facebook about his deadly plans, posting a string of statuses.
The first read: “I’m going to kill my grandmother,” followed by “I just shot my grandmother,” and “I’m going to shoot up an elementary school,” Abbott said during a Wednesday press conference.
Ramos did not have a criminal background but people who knew the 18-year-old said that he had a history of violence, including being involved in multiple fights at school.
“Some classmates [said] that Ramos was known for fighting and threatening fellow students,” ABC News reported. “They said he exhibited increasingly disturbing behavior over the past two years, threatening at least one classmate and stalking others, and that he claimed to have cut scars into his face.”
The bullied loner
The 18-year-old was described as someone who was quiet, said classmates, friends, family and a manager at a local Wendy’s where he worked.
“He felt like the quiet type, the one who doesn’t say much. He didn’t really socialize with the other employees,” Wendy’s evening manager Adrian Mendes told CNN. “He just worked, got paid, and came in to get his check.”
Ramos’ grandfather said that the 18-year-old had not attended school in the past year, adding that sometimes he would take his grandson to work with him, according to ABC.
The 18-year-old’s mother’s boyfriend, 62-year-old Juan Alvarez, also told NBC that the shooter was “kind of a weird one.”
“I never got along with him. I never socialized with him. He doesn’t talk to nobody,” Alvarez told the news station. “When you try to talk to him he’d just sit there and walk away.”
Former classmates told CNN that Ramos “would get severely bullied and made fun of a lot” and that students would call the 18-year-old “school shooter and stuff like that,” because of the clothing he wore and his family’s financial situation.
One student told CNN that he would play Xbox with Ramos and that the 18-year-old had recently sent him a picture of the AR-15 firearm, a backpack with rounds of ammunition and several gun magazines.
“I was like, ‘Bro, why do you have this?’ and he was like, ‘Don’t worry about it,’” the classmate told CNN. “He proceeded to text me, ‘I look very different now. You wouldn’t recognize me.’”
Another student at Uvalde High School, Stanley Torres, told CNN that Ramos often “hung out by himself.”
Staff writer Kaley Johnson contributed to this report.
This story was originally published May 24, 2022 at 6:43 PM with the headline "Uvalde, Texas school shooting: What do we know about the gunman and his family?."
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